vAdapter: Easy-to-deploy, Operational tool for Radware AppDirector and Alteon Application Switch

The Virtual Data Center’s Dynamic Configuration Challenge

Virtualization creates a single, consolidated infrastructure that enables deploying multiple resources on-the-fly. As a result, adding or removing VMs dynamically becomes easy and painless. While provisioning a new server in the traditional physical environment can typically take up to several weeks, the same server operating in the virtual environment can be provisioned within a couple of minutes.

As the ADC solution guarantees the availability and performance of virtual applications, the network administrator must adapt the ADC configuration with any configuration changes within the virtualization layer. These changes might include adding a new VM to a virtual application cluster, removing it from the application cluster, or provisioning a new critical application. Left unchecked, virtual application availability and performance could suffer significant degradation.

Introducing vAdapter: Automatically Adapt the ADC to Virtual Infrastructure Configuration Changes

vAdapter™ ensures that any change in the virtual infrastructure (VI) -- impacting the ADC configuration -- is automatically synchronized with the ADC in real-time, without manual configuration of the ADC or coding any complex scripts.

Using vAdapter, IT administrators can easily map a cluster of VMs that define a service in the virtual environment to its corresponding ADC configuration. For instance, once a new VM is added to the virtual service cluster, vAdapter automatically reconfigures the ADC in real-time, so that the respective server is added to the service farm or group accordingly.

vAdapter eliminates the need for:

• Frequent manual configuration updates to the ADC
• Constant coordination between network and server teams
• Scripting and manual configuration of the virtual environment

vAdapter cuts operational overhead, saves time and prevents errors to reduce OPEX significantly.

Network and VI Administrators Retain Full Control of Their Environments

As vAdapter automatically synchronizes ADC configuration according to the VI configuration changes, it offloads the tedious, day-to-day tasks including adding, removing, disabling or enabling resources. At the same time, network and VI administrators retain full control over their environments and tasks, enabling them to focus on their core tasks.

vAdapter feature highlights:

• Available as a downloadable software component, vAdapter can be deployed as an Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) Virtual Appliance designed for the VMware environment.
• Supports redundant ADC configurations including active-active and active-backup deployments
• Offers tight integration with both AppDirector and Alteon Application Switch
• Offered FREE to Radware’s ADC customers
• Tightly integrates with both VMware VI3 and vSphere product lines, including all VMware advanced management capabilities such as HA and DRS.
• vAdapter management is provided as a plug-in to the VMware management system, or as a standalone Web-app, which does not require any additional installation
• Manual confirmation mode ensures changes are always controlled
• Supports full logging of every change made for compliance and full audit trail