How modern offload technologies in Application Delivery Controllers can drastically reduce expenses in traditional and virtualized architectures, with a fast ROI. In the following pages we won't show you how to determine if there is a compelling ROI case for Application Delivery Controllers, but how to determine how much of a compelling case there really is.
F5 White Paper
The ROI of Application
Delivery Controllers in
Traditional and Virtualized
Environments
How modern offload technologies in Application Delivery Controllers can drastically reduce expenses in traditional and virtualized architectures, with a fast ROI.
By Lori MacVittieTechnical Marketing Manager, Application Services
By KJ (Ken) Salchow, Jr.Manager, Technical MarketingWhite Paper The ROI of Application Delivery Controllers in Traditional and Virtualized Environments
Contents
Introduction 3
The Magic of Server Offload 3
SSL Termination and Offload 5
Compression Offload 7
TCP Offload 9
Cashing In 10
Virtualization and Consolidation 11
Conclusion 14
2White Paper The ROI of Application Delivery Controllers in Traditional and Virtualized Environments
Introduction
The concept of spending money to make money-often referred to as "investing" outside of the technology industry-is something just about every marketing campaign promises, but few deliver. The ROI calculations to prove how quickly an investment will reap return often come with a lot of conditions. For instance, it's only valid on Tuesdays, under a full moon, and when applied to a specific version of software deployed on a (now) obsolete piece of hardware.
But solutions that provide a quick ROI along with significant technological benefits do exist. The trick is finding these solutions and proving that the ROI model is valid for almost every case.
It's not magic. It's simple math. In the following pages we won't show you how to determine if there is a compelling ROI case for Application Delivery Controllers, but how to determine how much of a compelling case there really is.
The Magic of Server Offload
Let's say you are in charge of a rather large data center for a rapidly growing web 2.0 company. And let's say your "rather large" data center has approximately 1,000 servers. What if someone told you that you could reduce that server number by 40 percent without decreasing performance or availability? And what if that person told you that the solution capable of this magical feat would pay for itself in just 10 months? After you stopped laughing, you might want to hear more about the magic fairy dust that was going to reduce server count without impacting the application, so you could laugh some more.
Assume each server costs an average of US $2,500, consumes 150 watts of power 1 2at an average cost of 10.6 cents per KwH , and costs the organization $288 a year in administrative costs. As this paper will show, reducing the number of servers from 1,000 to 600, while servicing the same number of users at the same performance levels, results in a full return on a $200,000 investment in about 10 months. The savings that achieve this ROI come from the reduction in power and management costs those 400 servers would have required. Future savings can be calculated by reducing the projected growth in server count and applying the same cost savings to those servers as well.
33White Paper The ROI of Application Delivery Controllers in Traditional and Virtualized Environments
So, how can you realize these benefits? It's not magic or fairy dust; it's a technological concept called "server offload" that moves computationally intensive (CPU and memory) processing that would normally be handled by servers to an external platform. That external platform is commonly known as an Application Delivery Controller (ADC).
An ADC, in addition to performing commoditized functions like load balancing (which you probably already know about from scaling out your 1,000-server application) is also capable of offloading a variety of other functions such as SSL termination and compression. Both of these tasks are highly computationally intensive and CPU-bound, but are generally implemented at the server level instead of within the application code. This makes them ideal functions to offload to a device more efficient at handling such tasks. In addition, an ADC can add efficiency to the connections themselves-resulting in additional savings.
Whether you are looking to consolidate physical resources and create a virtualized data center, or you're sticking with a tried-and-true traditional architecture, the ability to forestall additional capital expenditures through the imp... [download for more]
