Microsoft C9C00500, R1802907 Benefits and F5 Value, User Experience and Application Performance

F5 APPLICATION READY NETWORK GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS SERVER 2008

Benefits and F5 Value

User Experience and Application Performance

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 gives organizations a powerful new platform that is designed to power the next-generation of networks, applications, and Web services. Windows Server 2008 includes some exciting new components such as Microsoft’s new TCP/IP stack, Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP), and new versions of industry standard applications like Windows Terminal Services and Internet Information Services. F5 has been working closely with Microsoft to ensure that F5’s Application Ready Network for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 provides the highest level of application availability, performance, and end user satisfaction.

One of the highlights of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 is a next generation TCP/IP stack that has been completely redesigned from the ground up. F5 solutions include a host of TCP/IP optimization technologies that are compatible with Microsoft’s new stack. These optimizations, which combine session-level application awareness, persistent tunnels, selective acknowledgements, error correction, and optimized TCP windows, enable F5 devices and Microsoft Server 2008 installations to fully utilize available bandwidth. This enables F5 devices to adapt, in real time, to the latency, packet loss, and congestion characteristics

of WAN links, and accelerate virtually all application traffic. And F5 isolates, controls, and independently optimizes user and server connections, enabling both the server and end user to maximize productivity.

With the rapid expansion of the Internet and the quickly diminishing number of IPv4 addresses available, organizations are looking to ensure their network infrastructure is adequately prepared for the future. Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) support is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. IPv6, a new suite of standard protocols for the network layer of the Internet, is built into both Windows Server 2008, as well as F5 devices, ensuring that your network and Microsoft applications

are ready for this inevitable change. With F5’s IPv6 support, organizations have a clear strategy for staging network migration as IPv6 traffic grows, without wholesale network and application upgrades. Additionally, F5 devices can perform IPv6/IPv4 translation, translating traffic for consumption by either IPv4 or IPv6 end points. This allows organizations to stage their migration gradually as demand for IPv6 increases. F5 enables you to freely intermingle IPv4 and IPv6 services on Windows Server 2008; for example, F5 can serve as an IPv4 front end to Windows Server 2008 Web Access servers that only use IPv6. With F5, organizations have a strong solution for today and well into the future.

Windows Server 2008 is extremely effective at what it was designed to do: provide a solid foundation for server workload and application requirements. One of F5’s core strengths is the ability to enhance end-user experience while increasing application and server performance. We do this by taking on many of the duties that servers traditionally have to perform. If each server has to carry out processor-intensive tasks such as compression, caching, and SSL processing and certificate management, the amount of processing power these devices have left to perform core tasks is reduced.

By offloading these types of tasks onto F5’s centralized and high powered network devices, F5 greatly improves Windows Server 2008 server efficiency and enables organizations to reduce the amount of hardware. This applies to all the major components of Windows Server 2008, including Windows Terminal Services, Internet Information Servers, and SSTP.

F5 provides technology that guarantees the most efficient network possible. Because F5’s unique TMOS™ operating system is a full proxy, it can optimize any end point that connects through the system. As a full broker of communications, the system optimizes communication for every single end-device communicating through it. This optimization can take place up and down the entire stack

—from the transport layer to the protocol and application layer — functions outside the

control of Windows Server 2008. This takes the workload off of the Windows Server 2008 devices for increased server efficiency. By reducing unnecessary protocol communication across the network, F5 improves application response times and utilization for Windows Server 2008 deployments and other applications on the network.

Even high-powered and efficient applications and servers, like Windows Server 2008, as well as other devices on the local area network (LAN), are not much help over the wide area network (WAN). Network latency across the WAN is one of the biggest challenges facing IT departments around the world, and is a major concern for organizations deploying applications like Windows Terminal Services where users can access applications from anywhere. Simply increasing bandwidth does nothing to solve the problem. F5 helps drastically reduce the impact of latency in a number of ways. In addition to the benefits from TMOS, F5 solves latency problems with a group of capabilities that eliminates the need for the browser to download repetitive or duplicate data, as well as ensuring the best use of bandwidth by controlling browser behavior. By reducing the extra conditional requests and excess data (re)transmitted between the

“Windows Server is one of the most popular application platforms that we see within our enterprise customer base. As such, F5 has put substantial resources into testing its application delivery portfolio with the Windows Server platform technologies through every step of the beta to maintain a high level of interoperability.”

Jim Ritchings, VP of Business Development at F5

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