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Radware Ltd. today announced the Web Server Director for Distributed Sites (WSD-DS). The newest member of the acclaimed Web Server Director (WSD) family of products for balancing loads between local and distributed web farms, WSD-DS is ideal for large Intranet sites and ISPs. With shipments beginning in November, it is the first product to offer a complete solution for fault tolerance and load balancing at both local and remote sites, and provides the most cost effective system for distributing traffic between distributed web farms. The WSD-DS will be demonstrated at the NetWorld Interop Paris show, October 21-23 at the Radware booth (Hall 7, booth G93).
Each WSD-DS can provide load balancing for up to 10,000 local virtual server farms and backup servers, maximizing the use of the servers' capacity and optimizing storage resources. The WSD-DS enables large organizations to improve the quality of service they provide their customers by transparently redirecting clients to the optimal destination. This ensures the most reliable and efficient service, even when a server or entire site is down or is busy.
"With the addition of the Web Server Director for Distributed Sites to our Web Server Director family, our customers will be able to maximize the performance of all their sites company-wide, regardless of whether they are local or distributed," said Roy Zisapel, president of Radware Ltd. "This protects their existing investment in multiple server farm locations throughout the corporation. And, most importantly, the significantly improved web server performance translates to faster, smoother and overall higher quality service for their customers."
The WSD-DS will enable distribution of traffic over the Internet to multiple server farms residing in different sites. Weighting can be applied to each farm according to its power, with the load balancing scheme then able to take the relative weights into account when redirecting traffic. For example, if an ISP has major sites in several countries, each site is configured by the user defining which of the other sites will serve as an alternate to that site. Thus, when a server farm in one country becomes loaded or fails, the traffic will be redirected to the least loaded site in the alternate site list according to the appropriate weighting. The WSD-DS redirects traffic using either HTTP redirection, which uses a similar method to regular HTTP links, or the triangulation method, which is used for all applications. WSD-DS is the only solution that offers the flexibility of two redirection methods, enabling users to select the most efficient for their application.
Additionally, when multiple WSD-DS units are installed on a network, all units can communicate with each other using the Load Report Protocol (LRP), thus ensuring effective distribution of the load based on updated information about actual load status rather than on a preset order of redirection. Further more this enables the weighting of each site to be dynamically changed to reflect up-to-date load and operating status.
Another key benefit of the WSD-DS is that when multiple WSD-DS systems are installed on a network, each one can share the load with any other WSD-DS or WSD Pro systems. Remote redirection of traffic is particularly useful for companies with numerous sites connected to a few central sites, enabling a company to utilize a combination of WSD-DS and WSD Pro units to develop a hierarchy of distributed farms. In this way, a few major sites, rather than a single entry point, can redirect traffic locally or to remote sites, providing maximum flexibility in balancing load across the entire network. Moreover, using the WSD-DS, a remote site can be defined as a back-up site for use in the event that the main sites go down.
Radware's concept for distributing traffic between server farms has other major advantages over other traffic distributing solutions. It is based on the real load rather than on geographical distribution where sites could be busy since they are all in the same time zone. In contrast to other schemes which allow for distribution between different sites but need additional routers or devices in addition to the load balancing system at each site, Radware's solution requires only the deployment of Web Server Director DS systems. WSD-DS systems support routing functions and thus do not require a series of additional routers. A single WSD-DS at each site balances load between local servers and distributes traffic between sites.
The Web Server Director Pro starts at $11,400 (US). The WSD-DS for Ethernet is priced at $17,400. The WSD-DS for Fast Ethernet is priced at $22,500.
About Radware
Radware Ltd. is a member of the multi-million dollar RAD-BYNET Group, a family of 13 independent companies serving diverse markets and technological niches within the networking and communication industry. The company provides enhanced information access, at any time and any place, by optimal utilization of server resources, be they Internet, Intranet, or Extranet applications. Radware's flagship product, the Web Server Director (WSD), is already installed in many Fortune 500 companies and in world-leading Internet Service Providers. It has been enthusiastically received by the professional data communications and internetworking communities and has won numerous awards, including the prestigious PC Magazine Editor's Choice award and Network Computing's Best Value award, in competition with all other major web server load balancers. Radware products are sold worldwide through distributors, resellers, VARs, OEM agreements and joint projects.