As the Web becomes the de-facto way of delivering application services, the number of web applications that enterprises and service providers must support has increased tremendously. Application delivery controllers (ADCs) combining L4-7 load balancing with acceleration, security and offload functionality are critical to delivering today’s web applications. However, today’s web applications are complex enough that ensuring they are delivered with the necessary performance, availability and security service levels depends upon tuning the web application delivery infrastructure to the unique characteristics and needs of each individual application.

Traditionally, this has left IT with a choice of two options, neither of which is optimal. To best meet the individual needs of each application, appliances can be dedicated on an app-by-app basis. This provides the necessary flexibility, but is expensive to deploy and maintain. Or, single appliances can be used to serve multiple applications. This keeps costs down, but frequently leads to managing conflicts, both technical and organizational, between the different apps running on the appliance.

Flex-Tenancy: a new solution

What is needed is for an IT organization to be able to flexibly deploy per tenant configurations while maintaining strict SLAs and isolation per tenant all while minimizing capital and operational costs.

Server virtualization, and the associated emergence of virtual appliances, is a key weapon meeting these needs. The availability of NetScaler as a virtual appliance enables IT organizations to apply the benefits of virtualization to the web application delivery component of their network and data center infrastructure.

Specifically, NetScaler physical and virtual appliances can be used together in a two-tier architecture – a flex-tenancy architecture – with each tier dedicated to managing specific actions.

• Shared-network service flex tier running NetScaler MPX physical appliances
• Application-specific tenant tier running primarily NetScaler VPX virtual appliances

NetScaler MPX and NetScaler VPX compliment each other to:

• Provide tremendous flexibility for how application delivery services are deployed and managed
• Make it much easier to shuffle applications and their associated application delivery resources on-demand without risking the stability of the entire network
• Reduce costs

Download the Implementing Scalable Multi-tenant Infrastructures with NetScaler VPX Express solution guide here.