On Thursday, October 25, 2001, at 09:25 PM, Sean Chittenden wrote:
> I don't work for these guys, but damn their stuff is cool.
> http://www.f5.com/BIGIP5K/
> I dig the flash intro:
> http://www.f5.com/BIGIP5K/5Kflash.html
No arguments there. The flash is slick.
> Not like many folks have budgets to work with these days, but
> still... useful to know that there's something new/cool out there. -sc
I don't work for them either and I have used their products. I still
find their advertising as deceptive as the next guy.
The BIG-IP isn't a hardware device, it is a computer that looks like a
switch. Now, there is nothing wrong with that at all, but they say "we
have 1GB of RAM and and an Alteon only had 4MB per port." How is that
even related? The RAM is used and allocated for completely different
tasks.
The SSL stats on that device are poor. It is supposed to switch gigabit
traffic and only does 800 SSL TPS? That sounds almost useless. If you
are near using 1GB or even 100Mbs, you are probably in need of more than
800 TPS. Dedicated standalone SSL accelerators are both understood and
extremely cheap compared to content switches.
They advertise that they have 3DNS and the others don't. Well the
Arrowpoint has a DNS/global load balancing facilities as well (there
just not called 3DNS).
Also, why you would need SonicWall on your Cisco CSS to compare with the
BIG-IP is beyond me? So now the CSS is much cheaper. And, the Alteon 9
Gbs ports blows away the BIG-IP -- not to mention the 32Gbs backplane.
This was just a rant to not believe everything you read :-)
I like BIG-IP, I have been administrating a pair of their load-balancers
on a multi-million dollar dot com for well over a year and neither has
EVER misbehaved. Both simply work.
I also run a pair of ServerIron's (supporting global load balancing as
well and chiming in at $14k each retail -- I got 'em for $4k each) for
another architecture. Framkly, I forget their there. They just work,
all the time -- and under my performance tests, they can content switch
at wire-speed! Well over 100 Mbs! They simply cook.
With all that said, I still love mod_backhand. It definitely fills the
gaps that these products leave or inadequately tackle. It definitely
doesn't have an ego and fits well in an architecture that uses one of
these load balancers.
My two cents -- or perhaps a little more ;-)
--
Theo Schlossnagle
1024D/82844984/95FD 30F1 489E 4613 F22E 491A 7E88 364C 8284 4984
2047R/33131B65/71 F7 95 64 49 76 5D BA 3D 90 B9 9F BE 27 24 E7