Rewrite

Performing content rewrite at milli-speed is key to providing a front-end device for application delivery. Most important is the capability to rewrite both request and response headers & body content which the Citrix Application Switch does and it is an easy 3-step process to configure. Not only is it easy, it scales to Enterprise class applications, which we demonstrated here with the Oracle Enterprise Business Suite v12 in our lab in Santa Clara, CA, USA.

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Read about the Citrix Application Switch here.

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In the Application Expert series part 2, Caching, I released a Deployment Guide discussing Static and Dynamic Caching.  As we are partners with Microsoft, we recently did some work here internally setting up some Dynamic Caching for an ASP.NET application and thought we would share the knowledge. This Caching Deployment Guide for ASP.NET Web Applications discusses the way an Application Expert would find out the potential caching scenarios that a web application can benefit from, and shows how to create and test the NetScaler caching policies and settings to put these scenarios into effect.

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And it's FREE! Throw away those behemoths that suck power from every grid in the state and drain your budget. This baby is Free, Open Source and VIRTUAL, meaning you can run as many instances of this router as you want on your choice of hardware. What is even more gratifying is it's faster than the old router technology.

Vyatta has commoditized router, firewall and VPN deployment in the same way that Linux commoditized the operating system market. Vyatta open-source networking offers you an alternative to over-priced, inflexible products from proprietary vendors.

Vyatta software enables customers to build routing and security solutions using standard x86-based hardware of their choosing, ensuring networks will always meet performance requirements. Vyatta open-source software delivers the unique advantage of allowing customers to scale networks from the simplest LAN configurations to large BGP WAN edge configurations using a single software package.

Vyatta software includes support for most commonly used network interfaces, industry standard routing and management protocols, and all of these features are configurable via a single command-line interface (CLI) or web-based graphical user interface (GUI) - avail Q3'08. The integrated features and functionality make Vyatta software ideal for SMB, Branch Office, Enterprise and Service Provider deployments.

Summary of features:
BGP, OSPF, RIP, DHCP, QoS, IPSec VPN, VRRP, PPP, 802.1Q, Complete List.

This open source router is already running on XenServer in a large service provider in Europe. We are using it in our Citrix Ready program as a multi-link Intranet with connections to the Internet along with high availability link load balancing.

This para-virtualized Vyatta image runs as a virtual appliance in XenServer v3.2.1 and v4.1.

The XenServer Platform we are using:

• Dell Poweredge 2950 server.
• 2 x Intel 64-bit Quad-Core Xeon Processors, Model E5335 @ 2.00 GHz each, for a total of 8 CPUs.
• 2 Intel 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet (on-board)
• 2 Broadcom NetXtremeII Gigabit Ethernet
• 16 GB of memory.
• 300 GB of Storage.
• XenServer v4.1
• *note: CPU's must support virtualization technology.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Virtual Router - Install:

Virtual Router - Config:

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Application Delivery is at the top of the list of any organization's priorities. Keeping up with those priorities requires a move to dynamic application delivery and virtualization. The Citrix NetScaler Application Switch is a powerful step in that direction.

Compressing content at the server level can be done, but is tedious, and with the number of hosted servers on the backend growing proportionally with virtualization, it is better suited to a frontend tool. 

As an Application Expert, determining what type of content is compressible vs. that which is not compressible should be at the tip of your tongue, or at least you should be able to reference this post or document.  The thing is, while some content types remain compressible/non-compressible across many applications, you might run across an application that requires some content be treated uniquely.  For example, the SAP application requires that pdf files should not be compressed when sent back to the clients.  Either way, you should know how to dynamically configure rules to accommodate for the applications content.  This Compression Deployment Guide shows you how.

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