Chapter 1
Introduction
3
Server accelerator
The appliance can be configured as a web server to accelerate slower
traditional web servers. Documents stored in cache are served at high speed,
while documents not in cache are requested on demand from slower,
traditional web servers. This
server accelerator
feature is also called
reverse
proxy
.
Part of an HTTP cache hierarchy
The appliance can participate in flexible cache hierarchies, where Internet
requests not fulfilled in one cache can be routed to other regional caches,
taking advantage of the of nearby caches.
ICP sibling
The appliance supports the standard Internet Cache Protocol (ICP) to
interoperate with existing ICP cache hierarchies. The appliance can send ICP
queries to neighboring caches as part of an ICP cache hierarchy.
NNTP news cache
The appliance caches and serves NNTP news articles and can accept news
feeds for designated news groups.
Intel NetStructure Cache Appliance features The appliance provides a rich set of features to ensure high performance and
superior stability and to offer broad flexibility. The following list provides a brief
overview of the appliance’s primary features. For a more exhaustive list and
description of features, refer to
Carrier-class architecture‚ on page 143
.
Scalability
The appliance scales from a single node into multiple-node
clusters
, allowing
you to improve system performance and reliability simply by adding more
nodes to your cluster. Support exists for two types of clusters:
soft clustering
and
management-only clustering
. For more information on clustering, see
Clustering‚ on page 140
.
Boot Image Redundancy
The appliance features both a primary and secondary boot image on separate
hard drives. When a drive with a boot image fails, a system administrator can
detect and replace the faulty hard drive. This feature helps maximize the time
your system is up and running uninterrupted.