Enhancing
Microsoft Exchange 2013
Microsoft
Exchange load balancing is just the beginning…Throughout the years, F5 BIG-IP
has been a critical component supporting Microsoft Exchange to implement a
variety of performance, security, and architectural requirements.
During
that time, we've seen Microsoft Exchange evolve itself from a fairly simple,
small business solution to a robust enterprise-class solution with an integrated
ecosystem of services providing for communication, collaboration, and
cooperation. As Microsoft prepares to launch its latest version of Exchange,
again we're seeing some evolutionary changes in its architecture. Most prominent
is the elimination of a requirement for persistence; the Client Access Server
(CAS) component is now a stateless proxy. For those paying attention through the
years, the implementation of persistence within Microsoft Exchange deployments
was more often than not architecturally designated to an F5 BIG-IP.
Does
the elimination of the requirement render BIG-IP obsolete?
Of
course not. While there's been some conjecture that layer 4 load balancing
services will suffice for CAS 2013 (and for simple load balancing scenarios, it
will) such statements are short-sighted in recognizing the increasing role of
mobile and roaming clients, and the need to address core performance and
security of public-facing applications (of which Exchange is certainly one). The
delegation of persistence management to BIG-IP was often deemed most efficient
because BIG-IP was a part of the architecture for other application delivery
services – perimeter security, performance, server efficiency, multi-site
resiliency, and, of course, scalability.
Scale
and multi-site resiliency are imperatives today, with growth of users and
devices and locations from which e-mail needs to and will be accessed. A
distributed workforce can't afford to lose productivity due to slow delivery of
e-mail or inability to readily access important content via any access medium,
regardless of location. These are the kinds of challenges F5 BIG-IP addresses
over and above routine tasks like load balancing.
These
challenges have not been eliminated with Microsoft's most recent version of
Exchange, and BIG-IP is still the ADC of choice for providing these services for
deployments large and small. BIG-IP does layer 4 load balancing
just as well as layer 7, after all, but also offers a robust set of delivery
services that go well beyond either function. Ryan Korock, Technical Director
focusing on Microsoft-partner initiatives, has a great list of 8 reasons why an
ADC remains invaluable to Microsoft Exchange implementations that goes into more
detail on what BIG-IP has – and continues – to offer Microsoft Exchange
deployments.
For
further information visit: http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.
No comments:
Post a Comment