The load balancing industry has a Goldilocks problem. Traditional solutions, like hardware and virtual appliances, are rigid, difficult to manage, and highly inefficient in both cost and capacity utilization. On the other hand, cloud-based load balancing solutions leverage automation and are more nimble, but they don’t have the depth of features you want and are often locked into a single cloud. That’s why Avi Networks, now part of VMware, reinvented the load balancer so you can have a load balancing solution that is just right.
And I know what I’m talking about, because I quite literally wrote the (children’s) book on it: Goldilocks and the 3 Load Balancers.
Avi didn’t build a better appliance. Avi reinvented application traffic management by developing a software-defined, controller-based load balancing fabric so you can replace your entire fleet of load balancers with a single load balancing controller.
Now instead of managing pairs of active-standby appliances, you simply need to configure the Avi Controller. The Avi Controller maintains and active fabric of Service Engines that provide traffic management and security (e.g. WAF) services for all your applications across any cloud or data center.
As your applications experience fluctuations in traffic and demand, the Avi Controller automatically spins up/down Service Engines to meet load balancing demand. And because Service Engines can spin up and down in mere seconds, you’re sure to always have the amount of load balancing that is just right.
Almost 3 years ago we put the Avi Controller to the test. We wanted to prove that Avi could handle ludicrous scale, so we ran a test where the Avi Controller scaled Service Engines from 0 TPS (transactions per second) to over 1 million TPS back down to 0 in just a matter of minutes. Avi consistently delivers this performance across bare metal, virtualized, and cloud environments.
The key to this performance is Avi’s use of application analytics and telemetry. Load balancers sit at a strategic position on the network, but few use the data to power intelligence, automation, and troubleshooting. Avi monitors and analyzes over 700 application, infrastructure, network, and end-user metrics. The Avi Controller uses this information to automatically scale and self-heal. In fact, customers often receive an email alert detailing how the Avi Controller resolved an issue before they were even aware that there was an issue.
For years, VMware’s software has been at the forefront of enterprises’ digital transformations. But the value of VMware’s software-defined vision can’t be fully realized with load balancer appliances or solutions that are locked in to a single cloud. VMware’s acquisition of Avi Networks help you complete the last mile of your digital transformation. So if you’re experiencing that Goldilocks problem with your current load balancer, schedule a demo and learn about the only load balancing solution that is just right for you.
