BROCADE IP PRIMER

Server Load Balancing (SLB)15Welcome to Layers 4-7! We're on the home stretch now, and we're about totalk about one of my favorite tools in network engineering: the BrocadeServerIron ADX. This chapter will not only introduce you to the ServerIron ADXseries, but it will introduce you to basic load balancing infrastructures. Thenext three chapters will go a deeper into more sophisticated configurations.Now, entire books have been written on just the Brocade ServerIron alone. Iwill make no claims for this section to be comprehensive. However, after readingthese chapters, you should feel comfortable designing many of thetechnologies listed, and you should certainly have a high-level understandingof the methods involved.NOTE: The four chapters in this section refer to features and hardware specificto the Brocade ServerIron ADX series only, referred to hereinafter as theServerIron.The Brocade ServerIronThe ServerIron is an amazing tool. It's not really even fair to confine it to Layers4-7. It really deals with Layers 2-7! It is, first, a switch. That's all. On top of thatfoundation, though, it has the ability to process and switch packets based onthe OSI Layers all the way up to 7 (Application).Overview of FeaturesSome common ways ServerIrons are used include:• Server Load Balancing (SLB) (keep reading for more on this)• Policy-Based Load Balancing (see Chapter 16)• Transparent Cache Switching (TCS) (see Chapter 16)• Firewall Load Balancing (FWLB) (see Chapter 17)• ISP Link Load Balancing (LLB)• Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) (see Chapter 18)• Application Security• Application AvailabilityBrocade IP Primer 325