Web optimization starts from inside the data center

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter, Network World, 2/13/07

Network architects are spinning new patterns in data centers to support remote users. Increasingly, WAN connections provide the structure to deliver corporate applications to users from servers distributed across the enterprise - and in some cases, the globe.

The move from a LAN to a slower-speed WAN, coupled with increases in server performance, means a higher proportion of application response time comes from the network. Web browsers deliver most corporate applications by opening a connection to receive the main page, and opening each subsequent image (or frame) on the page in the order it appears in the Web page. The resulting staggered delivery of pages, unnoticeable in the LAN environment, becomes annoying across a WAN.

We recommend enterprises with servers located across WANs from their users evaluate Web-application optimization products. The key to evaluating these products in the WAN environment is to focus on user perception of responsiveness, rather than raw measurement of throughput.

Today only 8.5% of employees work at a headquarters office, the traditional location of the data center, according to research we conducted last year. Satellite locations and home offices (up from 10% in 2005 to 17% in 2006), support the remaining staff.

IT departments want to control costs, increase control, and improve availability and customer service with a common architecture for headquarters, satellite and home offices. The result: Network architects typically consolidate data centers, with one of two key data centers remote from the main operations center.

The common architecture isolates the data center from all other segments of the network, resulting in simplified delivery, security and regulatory compliance, at the expense of higher network capacity requirements for a global corporation. Enterprises spend their money on facilities upgrades, server virtualization, consolidation and disaster recovery, sometimes putting the data center in a remote location with cheap electric power.

A number of head-end network appliances provide services that enhance user perception of performance, including distributed load balancing, caching, partitioning SSL tunnel termination, and application-aware acceleration techniques. Here are some considerations that should influence product choice:

* Feature set. Look for an interface that manages all aspects of application performance, with minimal complexity and overhead, including: performance monitoring, optimization, network optimization and compression, security, local and global load balancing, and scalability.

* Application optimization. Get support for generic HTTP applications and application-specific optimizations to improve further the performance of critical enterprise applications such as ERP and CRM. Evaluate the product against the applications you use, such as thick clients and generic and custom HTTP applications.

* User-perception optimization. Application optimization is about user experience. Evaluate the product from an end-user perspective, not just with network measurement tools. Browser behavior often matters more than raw pages per minute.

* Security. Dedicated silicon can deliver much better scalability for SSL termination. More importantly, concentrating security features from many applications, and offloading them to an external appliance, can mean better security and consistent enforcement of company security policies.

Don’t limit yourself to single-solution boxes designed to tackle each of your problems individually. Remember, each box costs an internal store-and-forward latency, as well as the latency for network transfer. Instead, spin your Web optimization strategy around user perception, which considers both latency and throughput as viewed by the person looking at the screen.

For more information, see Network World's buyer's guide for Application Acceleration Management equipment.

Editor's Note: Check out Networkworld.com's latest feature, Microsoft Subnet
Every day, our editors scour the Web to collect the most interesting and important Microsoft-related blogs, news, discussion forums and security alerts and present them to you on one page. At Microsoft Subnet, readers can create their own blogs and comment on the Microsoft news and issues of the day.