In the fast-paced world of IT, every second counts. The difference between seizing a competitive advantage and lagging behind can come down to how swiftly applications are deployed and how efficiently they run. Let’s delve into the urgent need for speed in application deployments, the pitfalls of relying on legacy load balancers, and Avi’s transformative power.
Legacy Load Balancers: The Architectural Relics
Legacy load balancers, stuck in 1990s architecture, weren’t built for the cloud. As applications, VIPs, and data centers grow, IT teams must act now to avoid operational bottlenecks and innovation slowdowns.
1. Snail Speed, Dissatisfied Application Teams
With legacy load balancers, the lifecycle of provisioning new virtual IPs (VIPs) can take anywhere from a few days to weeks, piling up in IT pipelines. This sluggishness in deployment can seriously impede application deployment timelines. Imagine the frustration of the application teams when they’re shackled by long waiting periods to get their applications up and running.
2. Ticket Chaos Mandates Triaging Amongst Teams
Legacy load balancers often follow a convoluted process of creating multiple tickets bouncing back and forth between various teams. To create new VIPs, tickets are also serialized for IP address allocation, DNS registry, firewall configuration, certificate management and load balancer configuration to add additional delays. Collaboration becomes a tedious juggling act, and manual triaging is required for long ticket review cycles.
3. Messy Script-Based Configurations
Configuring even basic features like HTTP redirects or content switching on legacy load balancers is an unnecessarily complex and error-prone process, often requiring custom scripts. These scripts demand significant time and manual efforts to create, test, and deploy. Scripting isn’t a core skill set for many networking teams, requiring a steep learning curve.
The VMware Avi Load Balancer: From Snail to Supersonic
As demand for rapid app deployment grows, Avi delivers with a modern software-defined scale-out architecture, offering elastic autoscaling, end-to-end analytics, and full automation for application and networking teams.
1. Rocket-Fueled Application Delivery
Avi transforms VIP provisioning from weeks to minutes, freeing application teams to focus on innovation. Unlike hardware-bound legacy load balancers, Avi’s software-based, scale-out architecture delivers speed, automation, and agility across data centers, clouds, and hybrid environments.
2. Zen with Automation and Self-Service
Automation lies at the heart of Avi. Very few tickets are required as it automates IP allocation, DNS registration, SSL termination, and firewall updates, minimizing tickets and manual delays. Self-service and auto-scaling empower IT teams to deploy apps faster without capacity concerns.
3. Easy-Peasy Policies
Most features in Avi are enabled as policies by default or can be configured with simple UI clicks. There is no need to write complex, messy TCL scripts for key features like HTTP redirects or content switching. This allows network teams to focus on performance optimization and strategic initiatives instead of manual configurations.
On the journey to the smart way to cloud, upgrading to Avi and VMware Cloud Foundation is a necessity. Leave behind the frustration of sluggish app deployments, endless ticket juggling, and configuration complexities. Embrace the future of rapid application deployment and cloud operating model. Don’t wait – the need for speed is now.
