Cloud Communications

F5 Demos BIG-IP Solutions for Microsoft Private Cloud

By Jayashree Adkoli TMCnet Contributor

Since F5 Networks (News - Alert) Inc., a provider of virtualization, cloud computing and on-demand IT, has been planning to roll-out BIG-IP solutions, compatible with Microsoft System Center 2012, as well as private cloud.

 The company recently showcased the latest F5 BIG-IP solutions for Microsoft (News - Alert) private cloud deployments at the Microsoft Management Summit 2012 in Las Vegas last week.

Microsoft System Center 2012 is a comprehensive management platform that helps enterprises manage their IT environments across traditional datacenters, private and public clouds, client computers and devices.

With the help of the latest F5 BIG-IP solutions, enterprises and hosting service providers will be able to automate deployments, boost performance and consolidate management of a Microsoft private cloud.

The F5 BIG-IP product family is generally a system of integrated application delivery services that work together on the same hardware. It creates an agile infrastructure to ensure applications are always fast, secure and available.

Apart from providing the capability to build dynamic data centers that eliminate deployment barriers and lay the framework for long-term and sustained efficiencies, the new F5 solutions also help organizations unify their network architectures and consolidate their management environments while in Microsoft’s private cloud.

Some of the BIG-IP solutions for Microsoft private cloud include the F5 Monitoring Pack for System Center, the F5 Load Balancing Provider for System Center and the Orchestrator component of System Center 2012.

At the Microsoft Management Summit 2012, F5 highlighted BIG-IP solutions’ compatibility with System Center 2012 to help organizations maximize cloud benefits and productivity.

Available now, the F5 Monitoring Pack for System Center provides two-way communication between BIG-IP devices and the System Center management console. Health monitoring, failover and configuration synchronization of BIG-IP devices, along with customized alerting, Maintenance Mode and Live Migration, occur within the Operations Manager component of System Center.

The F5 Load Balancing Provider for System Center, available as a free download from the F5 DevCentral Web site, facilitates one-step, automated deployment of load balancing services through direct interoperability between the Virtual Machine Manager component of System Center 2012 and BIG-IP devices.

According to officials with F5, the BIG-IP devices are managed through the System Center user interface, and administrators can custom-define load balancing services.

The Orchestrator component of System Center 2012, based on F5 iControl and Windows PowerShell, provides F5 traffic management capabilities and takes advantage of workflows designed with the Orchestrator Runbook Designer. The workflows can then be published directly into System Center 2012 service catalogs and presented as a standard offering to the organization.

Officials with F5 said in a press release that the company’s BIG-IP products and System Center 2012, together provide a clear view into how applications are performing over the network. This provides customers with the ability to update and optimize configurations to increase performance, scale, automation, flexibility and security.

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