Ensure the Secure Running of Appliances with Effective Load Balancers

While dependable internet connectivity has become imperative, it is load balancing that helps in achieving a greater bandwidth. Load balancing helps distribute workload over two or more servers in order to achieve increased redundancy, scalability or security. It has specific significance in busy networks, especially when it is challenging to predict the number of requests that will be issued to a server. While it not only increases the performance of servers, load balancing leads to their optimal utilization while also ensuring that no particular server is burdened.

Load balancing spreads the work of your managed server among two or more servers, optimizing resources, and output and response times. If a server fails in any way, requests are routed to other servers as per a predetermined standard to eliminate downtime. In load balancing, security is always important. Load balancers normally bring with them the added benefit of hiding the network and servers that are behind the scenes doing the actual work for the requested service.

Requesting a map service from one URL (the load balancer) may actually be assembled from many different servers that were behind a firewall. Since only the load balancer is allowed to communicate through the firewall security is increased as there would only be one point of entry. Some load balancers also come equipped with some analysis capabilities to detect denial of service attacks and take preventative measures.

With the increase in the size of an enterprise, there is an increase in the strain on the databases, network servers, and other crucial areas.  Especially effective for organizations that use multiple data centers and server farms, load balancing solutions monitor the workload of servers and help to direct users. Distributing the work load is important but being able to automatically detect and handle the failure and the recovery of back-end servers is crucial. Load balancers offer many different capabilities in this area. While some can only detect if the server is alive and on the network, others have very elaborate methods such as retrieving content from pre-determined web pages.

Depending on the hardware and organizational needs, it's important to speak with a reputable provider about implementing and customizing this solution to your needs. Each network faces different challenges and works within different constraints. Look for a service provider who can leverage parallel multi-core processing to cost-effectively drive industry-leading performance across a rich server load balancing and application acceleration feature set for unmatched total value of ownership.

 

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Importance of Server Load Balancing

The modern day enterprise network today manages greater requirements than before and hence the cost of failure is also heavy. The network is placed at the center of the IT architecture, connecting all storage, server and other infrastructure constituents within the data center and performance or downtime concerns can have profound impacts on the overall business.

 

Server load balancing has been the central point of providing network competency and scalability for over a decade now. Evolving from the initial days of the internet boom where they were used to offer resilience to enterprise web architectures, server load balancers today comprise the enterprise utilities that are essential to assist in critical mission enterprise applications. Today innovative practices such as Virtualization and advanced data centers are putting a greater pressure on the network in terms of reliability, bandwidth demands, scalability and competency with the network managers struggling to keep up the same. The network engineers need better solutions that seamlessly fit into their network infrastructure and are extremely manageable and help them to make efficient and minimize their operating expenses.

 

Network managers need solutions that are scalable and robust that they can be effectively placed into the network core. They are on the lookout for a product with efficient software and hardware performance to cater to the highest scalability and performance needs. Thus server load balancing remains an essential technology to assist these practices and is a basic building block within a data center structure and needs to be involved in any ongoing high-end network service implementation. Today server load balancing has become a basic solution virtually in almost all data centers. However, the modern day application delivery controllers (ADC) represent a great amount of evolution that has taken place from a simple server load balancing. Application delivery controllers provided by service providers comes with a multi-core architecture that supports huge throughput and a higher percentage of concurrent connections for scaling application availability without influencing the application performance.

 

Regardless, of whether you are accountable for a website or a single application, a huge internet property or public or a private cloud, advanced server load balancers offers the required scalability, performance, features and value for needed to pace up your business. Furthermore, it efficiently manages and monitors the health of the servers, evenly disseminates loads all through the servers and retains session persistence and provides for an effortless user experience when any one of the servers becomes overloaded or dysfunctional.

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BYOD

Ensuring Enterprise Mobility with BYOD Strategy

The arrival of IT consumerization has brought with it tech savvy consumers with a multitude of new age devices and equally adept at handling the latest technologies. Further, the growth of Internet led social media has also made the employees closer to their mobile devices. Armed with smartphones, tablets and new-age laptops, today’s employees demand greater mobility and prefer to use their personal devices at work. Enterprises need to embark on such ventures and provide employees with the freedom at work.

The BYOD (Bring your own device) concept is simple as it sounds. However, allowing employees to use personal mobile devices at work, the organizations face a number of challenges. Being in a technologically enabled and cybercrime filled business environment, the enterprises need to enable access to business applications without exposing the corporate network and avoiding any data leakage. Further, enterprises also need to make the changes in the existing infrastructure and applications to provide employees availability and access to business applications.

In an attempt to provide a cost-effective BYOD strategy, enterprises will need to work out RDP solutions enabling easy access to their remote desktop through any mobile devices chosen by the employees. Further, with the help of proxy architecture and RDP over SSL, enterprises can allow for anytime anywhere access to the applications and also ensure that data will not leave the corporate network. Such solutions developed by the leading service providers will enable seamless mobilization of the applications used by the enterprise and will also eliminate the chances of data leakage.

Reports from the online business community Entrepreneur Country claims that a simple strategy as BYOD at work can boost employee morale. Further, based on a poll of more than 300 CEO’s of small and medium enterprises showcased an affirmative response to RDP remote access and BYOD as a means to position their organizations as a flexible and employee friendly one besides being an effective business continuity planning solution. With technological growth enabling mobility and accessibility to business critical data and native applications across the enterprise with smartphones or any other devices irrespective of the location the enterprises are at risk of overloading of the corporate network.

While the use of load balancer distributes the load over the network, the appliance-based solution which is enterprise owned takes full control of the IT infrastructure and ensures closure of corporate network to third-parties. However, connectivity to personal devices is encrypted over SSL and the secure proxy architecture eliminating data leakage and potential attacks.

The innovative appliance based remote desktop access solutions have paved way for BYOD to make significant inroads into the business world. Today, with large number of employees across the global environment already using their own technology devices at work, has provided enterprises solutions that supports mix physical or virtual desktops and applications thereby maximizing the ability of the existing infrastructure while reducing complexities.

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Improve Security and Enhance Operational Efficiency with Tablet Access Solutions

Thanks to the consumerization of IT, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is a concept that is getting popular these days. Since today technology progresses from customers to organizations, more and more employees want to work with mobile devices that they are comfortable with. BYOD is here to stay and is not a passing trend as it is believed to be. As per Juniper research, the number of mobile devices used in the enterprises worldwide will increase and may be it will be more than double at the end of the year 2014. According to them, the number will reach up to an approximate 350 million in the year 2017.

Many organizations are in support of Bring Your Own Device as it benefits them primarily in two ways. On one hand it helps to increase the satisfaction level of the employees while on the other hand, it helps to reduce the IT equipment acquisition costs considerably. According to Gartner, by 2014 approximately 90% of organizations will support corporate applications on personal devices.

Today Smartphones and tablets are in huge demand among the employees and therefore there is the need for Smartphone and tablet access solutions to securely publish enterprise applications for use on mobile devices. It enables identity-based access from any mobile device to specific enterprise applications in a manner that streamlines the user experience while improving security and enhancing operational efficiency.

Security is an important factor that makes organizations hesitant in embracing the concept of BYOD wholeheartedly. However, with the new generation tablet access solutions, enterprises can ensure security and protection as these solutions guard against attack and data leakage by leveraging a reverse proxy architecture that keeps mobile devices off the network. Here is a look at some of the features of a best of breed tablet access solution.

* Mobilize any application

The solution enables tablet access enterprise-wide, without the need for additional hardware, software or application licenses.

* Eliminate Data Leakage

Proxy architecture and RDP over SSL helps to prevent the tablets from connecting directly to the corporate network. Since the tablets are kept "off-network", it not only maintains the security and compliance of office resources but also eliminates the potential for attack. Thus, the data never leaves the corporate network, never exists on tablets and never mixes with personal data thereby fully eliminating the potential for data leakage.

* Reduce Complexity

It reduces complexity by being an ideal complement to existing native mobile app solutions and supports any mix physical or virtual desktops and applications. This helps to maximize existing infrastructure, minimize the need for additional hardware and software and expand investments in native mobile apps and virtualization in an intelligent and cost-effective manner.

Thus with a good tablet access solution, enterprises can embrace BYOD securely and efficiently.

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Load balancing

Understanding the Benefits of Load Balancers

Being able to balance workload evenly all through various servers is crucial for resolving time-sensitive scanning issues and challenges. With a gateway HTTP scanning solution, all the internal endpoints that request for external Web content are more probable to have a positive experience in case both their request and the final content are allowed to transparently pass through the network’s web scanning or caching infrastructure.

 

Importance of Load Balancing in Web Security

Load balancing can be defined as the practice of evenly disseminating work across various computers. The method offers numerous benefits, such as:

* It brings down the load on individual system and reduces the response time

* It maximizes the network utilization and increased throughput

* It enhances reliability

* It facilitates scaling

* It enhances user satisfaction

 

Load balancing or load balancers pertaining to web security products and solution is the discipline of intelligently routing the incoming and outgoing HTTP traffic to any one of the various servers that are accountable for controlling the access to websites. It is also responsible for scanning the traffic for spyware, malware, Phishing attacks and other unwarranted and harmful content.

 

Advanced Load Balancers and Their Benefits

Setting up an efficient HTTP scanning environment is a complicated task. There are enterprises that consider an efficient HTTP access essential to business productivity. Furthermore, keeping in mind the industry vertical they might also attach greater importance to it than email. However, contrary to email scanning HTTP scanning has better visible metrics and is considered to be “real time”. Keeping all these aspects in mind solution providers of RDP Remote Desktop Protocol Access has introduced advanced load balancers with a multi-unit clustering for 99.999% application uptime and data center scalability. 

 Other unique features and benefits include the following:

* Offers innovative application-fluent traffic management for optimized delivery of business critical applications and IP services

* Enables offloading of Web and application servers for maximized efficiency, capacity and return on investment

* A well incorporated TCP connection multiplexing, high-speed HTTP processing, compression and caching for enhanced application performance

* There is SSL acceleration for safeguarding data in transit, offloading compute-intensive processes from servers and enhancing application performance

* There are application-specific certifications and configuration guides for quick implementation of optimized configurations

* Offers VMware integration for intelligent command and controlling virtualized application architecture comprising dynamic resource allocation and deallocation

Load balancer service providers with their fault-tolerant solutions offer consistent performance and is time-saving. The applications are up and operating safely with lesser downtime issues.

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Leverage Your Server Load Balancing Appliances

Today’s highly techno savvy business professionals communicates through the world wide web. Every business house today is dependent on the internet to connect to its audience and other network offices located globally. The internet therefore has become a crucial component of every business activity and is required to be easily accessible are consistent to make sure proper business continuity. Keeping these concerns in mind load balancing is the method that offers a cost-efficient, effective and easily manageable links to cater to business requirements.

Server load balancing is a process that is used to distribute evenly the processing or service requests all through multiple equipments in a network. Dedicates hardware, software and servers conduct load balancing and link load balancers are a crucial part of a network. In order to maintain a stable network organization today need to invest in load balancing solutions. The other factor that requires to be given importance is to ensure that there is an optimal resource distribution all through the servers.

Today top notch service providers of remote desktop solutions have come up with innovative load balancing appliances, that offers the following benefits:-

* Allows Local and global server load balancing with multi-unit clustering for 99.999% application uptime and data center scalability

* Innovative application-fluent traffic management for optimal delivery of crucial business applications and IP services

* Helps in the offloading of Web and application servers for maximized efficiency, capacity and return on investment

* Provides a well Integrated TCP connection multiplexing, high-speed HTTP processing, compression and caching for a 5X enhancement in application performance

* Provides SSL acceleration for safeguarding data in transit, offloading compute-intensive processes from servers and enhancing the application performance

* There is a Reverse-proxy infrastructure with a stateful packet-inspection firewall that safeguards applications without influencing its performance

* There are application-specific certifications and configuration guidelines for quick deployment of optimized configurations

* Load balancing solution have inbuilt VMware vCenter integration for intelligent command and control of virtualized application infrastructure including dynamic resource allocation and deallocation

Today most organizations utilize two ISP links to connect to the internal network to the internet. Out of these two links one is in use always while the second link is kept as a back up option. In order to weed out unnecessary blocking of the ISP as a back up, there is a technology known as link load balancing solution. The benefits of this appliance comprise of real-time monitoring of WAN links and connections. It also leverages bandwidth management and compression resulting in efficient utilization of WAN benefits.

Reasons to resort to RDP Access Solution

The modern day work scenario is no more about sitting in one place and doing a regular job from nine to six. Rather it is about being able to work from anywhere and everywhere. At the same time, employees want to manage a healthy balance between work and home. Therefore, many opt in from working from home in certain occasions. Most companies need to find the best solution to cater to this changing job environment. On the other hand there are companies that have already found an answer to it. The answer is resorting to remote desktop (RDP) solutions that encourage the concept of "anywhere and anytime" office.

Remote desktop access and user experience
Today leading companies dealing in application delivery networking has come up with remote desktop access solutions. This allows remote employees to connect instantly to their office desktops by launching a mobile application or opening any web browser such as Mozilla, Safari, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and the like. The employees log in with their daily credentials and then they are presented with their desktop icons to as they have customized. Therefore, they are at a beneficial position from the familiarity of their formal desktop environment. It's synonymous to working from an office.

Application Usages
Remote desktop access helps to leverage the present application, desktop and security architecture. Though there may be some employees who might have access to a virtualized desktop, a generic PC work platform is provided to every employee. There is no requirement for any new software or hardware, licenses or any other application platforms. The employees all over the enterprise are offered total application accessibility.

Data security with Remote Desktops
RDP access helps to effortlessly expand compliance that has been established on office computing devices to remote and mobile devices. Hence, the IT department needs to take no more initiative to retain compliance. The solution's appliance is based on "on-premise" infrastructure and offers total control for IT administrators that include termination and viewing of real-time sessions.

Owing to the fact that RDP access infrastructure transmits only video, keyboard and mouse control data between remote devices and office computers, the data never leaves the official network. Furthermore, controls for copy, paste and printing as well as measures against screen capture and key logging might be allowed in order to completely eradicate data leakage.

Therefore, in this modern day working environment need a working system that can adapt to their changing circumstance. At the same time, organizations too would want to maintain total productivity. With advanced remote desktop solutions companies can attain their targets and employees too can effortlessly maintain a work-life balance.

 

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Benefits of Link load Balancing Made Simple

Link Load Balancing looks at balancing out the critical resources on data networks with unpredictable requests issued to a server. It is also concerned with communications channels themselves to better distribute processing and communications demands more evenhandedly across the network so that no single a computer is beleaguered by the demand. The main purpose of link load balancing is to have a load-balancing failover between the two links at connection level. Some of the benefits of link load balancing include:

Increase in Reliability
Most networks and organizations prefer to implement link load balancing due to increased reliability. The failure of a network even for a few hours can cost an organization dearly in productivity and business. High uptime reliability can be achieved with link load balancing, and if a problem does occur and one of your providers does fail, switching from one provider to another is automated and immediate. In the event of a WAN link outage, link load balancing can redirect your network traffic to ensure continuous uptime for all parties that depends on your network and servers.

Cut down Costs
There are numerous reasons why an organization can cut down costs with link load balancing. The biggest advantage, however, is that link load balancing works with any type of broadband connection. All that is requited is a simple Ethernet handoff which establishes your WAN link. It is possible to keep non critical, economical broadband connections and more critical application on your more reliable connections, by being able to utilize various forms of inexpensive broadband connections.

Enhance Performance
By using link load balancers your organization can benefit with enhanced performance. The network can balance your incoming requests across your multiple WAN links, in most cases. This is can be achieved with an Active DNS module, that easily serves traffic between your broadband connections based on the best path available along with network metrics.

Manage Your Network’s Routing
Networking information routing can be easily managed with link load balancing. Most link load balancing solutions have software that offers advanced routing capabilities. Applications can be routed efficiently, when the organizations determine the critical and non critical applications. It is quite easy to split up your organizations network traffic by importance or application with link load balancing.

Link load balancing is the perfect technology for today’s organizations and can be implemented effectively with almost any network. It brings about an increase in reliability, a reduction in costs and added performance and management.

 

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Choosing the Right SSL VPN Solution

SSL is gaining popularity as a remote access tool with the remote connectivity being crucial for the productivity of the enterprise. Many client side issues associated with remote access can be eliminated with SSL VPNs as a technology.  With an easy migration, SSL VPNs also offer a more cost-effective, easier to deploy remote access solution than IPSec. Its blend of flexibility and function makes it extremely competitive. There is a wide rage of solutions available in today’s growing SSL VPN market, and it is therefore necessary to consider many factors before making a choice to purchase the best SSL VPN product. 

Security and user experience are the two aspects that SSL VPNs have to be evaluated against. A successful deployment of a secured solution can be achieved only by taking into consideration security and user experience. As a SSL VPN needs to serve the organization’s long term needs, it has to integrate with the network architecture seamlessly and also provide powerful management tools.  

Security 

As SSL itself does not make a VPN, encryption is not enough to provide the security required for today’s applications. An ideal SSL VPN solution needs to have a combination of different levels of protection like SSL VPN Firewall, Hardened OS, Network Gapping, Client Side Security, AAA, Reducing Network Exposure (Various Access Modes), Application Level Filtering, Virtualization and Network Separation. It is also important that an SSL VPN appliance provide client side security facilities as it allows anywhere and anytime access. This introduces the risk of unsecured devices getting into secured network locations. It is necessary for a user to securely download any required content during a session knowing that this content will be wiped automatically when the session is terminated. 

User experience 

There are a number of factors that determine the end user experience like performance, user interface customization, and high availability. An important component in a good user experience is the overall user interface, which is also greatly significant for user productivity. Any access solution with a poor user interface, be it a design or lack of custom business logic integration, adversely affect the productivity of its users. As the different options can create confusion for end users, it becomes crucial that the use of these different modes to be intuitive and have minimal user interaction as possible. A consistent experience with minimum downtime can ensure the best user experience.  

With an understanding of today’s and future needs, as well as careful evaluation of the capabilities of the different devices under consideration, a proper selection of a SSL VPN device can be made. It is therefore important learn more about the existing SSL VPN solutions and be updated about the future developments. This is the best way to make an informed decision regarding your company’s secure remote access requirements. 

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SSL Accelerator – Benefits of SSL Accelerator

An SSL accelerator is the device that is used for offloading the encryption algorithms in SSL transactions. Traditionally, this individual card plugs itself into a personal computer containing more than one co-processor that enables SSL processing.

Speaking of SSL acceleration, the SSL handshake is an exclusive part of any SSL session. Here you will find the SSL client and SSL server compatible with each other on a set of parameters that help in setting up a secure connection. A small part of the SSL handshake is to be compatible with the session keys. This in turn requires greater computational capacity over symmetric cryptography, which is used for decryption or encryption of the session information.

Today the market is filled with leading IT brands delivering efficient solutions in SSL accelerators. These solutions help in offloading SSL encryption from the servers and enhance the performance of the application systems. It also brings down the server count that is needed to assist in high volume safe transaction and e-commerce processing. Apart from these, it also helps in load balancing and results in application acceleration to set up a traffic management process that is apt for any e-commerce environment.

There are many benefits of SSL accelerators that an organization can enjoy. A few of them are listed below-

* SSL accelerators of high performance are used in securing information in transit, enhancing application functioning and divesting compute-intensive procedures from servers.

* Help in managing industry driven SSL client certificate, authorization, authentication and application addition.

* Total operation of SSL proxy is able to act as an SSL client and SSL server.

* A reverse-proxy structure with a packet-inspection firewall guides the applications without crashing down the performance.

* Helps in global server load balancing, grouping about 99.99 percent uptime application, data center scalability and managing local traffic.

* The data center modernization application comprises application specific templates and certifications, virtualization integration for quick consumption of optimized configurations.

The modern day computing environment is heavily SSL dependent and needs much more than quick processors. Innovative SSL accelerator products help users to off-load decryption and encryption processing maintaining information transfer security simultaneously.

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Application delivery controller

SSL Accelerator – Benefits of SSL Accelerator

An SSL accelerator is the device that is used for offloading the encryption algorithms in SSL transactions. Traditionally, this individual card plugs itself into a personal computer containing more than one co-processor that enables SSL processing.

Speaking of SSL acceleration, the SSL handshake is an exclusive part of any SSL session. Here you will find the SSL client and SSL server compatible with each other on a set of parameters that help in setting up a secure connection. A small part of the SSL handshake is to be compatible with the session keys. This in turn requires greater computational capacity over symmetric cryptography, which is used for decryption or encryption of the session information.

Today the market is filled with leading IT brands delivering efficient solutions in SSL accelerators. These solutions help in offloading SSL encryption from the servers and enhance the performance of the application systems. It also brings down the server count that is needed to assist in high volume safe transaction and e-commerce processing. Apart from these, it also helps in load balancing and results in application acceleration to set up a traffic management process that is apt for any e-commerce environment.

There are many benefits of SSL accelerators that an organization can enjoy. A few of them are listed below-

1. SSL accelerators of high performance are used in securing information in transit, enhancing application functioning and divesting compute-intensive procedures from servers
2. Help in managing industry driven SSL client certificate, authorization, authentication and application addition
3. Total operation of SSL proxy is able to act as an SSL client and SSL server
4. A reverse-proxy structure with a packet-inspection firewall guides the applications without crashing down the performance
5. Helps in global server load balancing, grouping about 99.99 percent uptime application, data center scalability and managing local traffic
6. The data center modernization application comprises application specific templates and certifications, virtualization integration for quick consumption of optimized configurations

The modern day computing environment is heavily SSL dependent and needs much more than quick processors. Innovative SSL accelerator products help users to off-load decryption and encryption processing maintaining information transfer security simultaneously.

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