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Application service providers such as SkyVantage host web-based applications and systems for small-to-mid-sized airlines. SkyVantage enables these airlines to reduce operating costs, while focusing on business activities and customer needs, rather than hiring in-house personnel and managing on-site servers and other network infrastructure. As with most successful businesses, SkyVantage was growing quickly as demand for its services increased. However, as more airline companies and user traffic was increasing at the front-end of the SkyVantage hosted system, the back-end systems were beginning to experience growing pains trying to keep up.
Beginning in 2006, SkyVantage experienced explosive growth – doubling in size every quarter. As the company grew, the hosting system infrastructure began to show signs that it was not keeping up with the demand. The application servers were not adequately managing the web traffic, which began to decrease the performance of the applications for its users. In addition, deficiencies in the technology terminated connections such as splitting packets, which increased the bottlenecks. These bottlenecks included terminated SSL transactions as well as TCP connections. Each terminated TCP connection required starting up a new connection that utilized more time and resources. This further slowed the server response time, and required IT staff to continuously monitor and correct the connectivity issues and packet splitting errors on an ongoing basis. Customers would lose information and receive “lost connection with server” error message. This level of service was no longer acceptable for SkyVantage and its customers.
“We were very pleased with the success we were experiencing, but we realized that our technology infrastructure was creating a bottleneck, and beginning to inhibit the growth of the company,” said Cory Robin, CEO of SkyVantage. “Frustrated with the limitations of our equipment, we were determined to find a technology solution to get the company back on track – whatever the cost.”
SkyVantage began a rigorous research and testing process to find the best solution to manage its web-based airline management system. SkyVantage required a new load balancing and application delivery solution with hardware-based SSL acceleration to manage its cluster of 24 application servers. For the following eight months, the IT team tested multiple load balancing products that ranged in features and price from $2,500 to $100,000 - and up.
Based on its past technology challenges, SkyVantage determined a set of requirements based on technical capabilities, rather than price. The new solution needed to include high-availability and Layer 7 server content switching to ensure improved website traffic performance, as well as load balance traffic across multiple servers. SkyVantage would use Layer 7 load balancing to check and adjust settings accordingly amongst its servers. The servers would be monitored continuously to determine which ones could handle additional traffic and ensure the right balance amongst the servers. SSL acceleration was also required to keep data encrypted and secure, while simplifying certificate management across the server cluster.
The Solution
After extensive research and ongoing testing of several load balancer options, SkyVantage chose the KEMP LoadMaster to manage its growing datacenter. SkyVantage compared the load balancing solutions side-by-side based purely on technical merit. In the end, KEMP was the clear winner.
“We were very surprised to learn that the solution we selected was available at such an affordable price,” adds Robin. “The KEMP LoadMaster outperformed every other product we tested, and some of the products cost as much as 100 times more than the KEMP product. At first, we found it hard to believe that the product with the highest performance also had the lowest price tag.”
As part of the new deployment, SkyVantage replaced its existing load balancers with two LoadMaster 1500 appliances for high-availability. The KEMP load balancers effortlessly handle high traffic loads, increasing the overall performance of the airline management system. Functioning in high-availability mode, and managing 24 servers in a Java-based Linux environment, the KEMP products have been up and running flawlessly, and without any of the previous technical and performance issues.
Along with the required features, the SkyVantage servers also benefit from health monitoring, which prevents requests from being sent to ill-performing servers – ensuring true high-availability for end-users. With 99.999% high-availability and stateful failover, the LoadMaster allows SkyVantage to provide a reliable hosted management system to its customers.
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