F5 BigIP Load Balancing

GlobalCenter offers a server load balancing service, based on the industry acclaimed and leading F5 BigIP product. A pair of BigIP's in a redundant configuration are shared amongst customers requiring load balancing for HTTP, FTP, SMTP or any application that is connection oriented.

The BigIP's offer several load balancing techniques, including round-robin, fastest node, predictive, ratio, least-node connections, and others.

One or more application servers are configured in a server "pool", which is then mapped to a virtual IP address (VIP). The DNS for the application is then changed to point to the VIP. When a request comes into the VIP, the BigIP performs a destination address rewrite, sends it to the application server, and then performs a source address rewrite as the packet leaves to go back to the requesting client.

Customer Security

Placing each customer in their own dedicated VLAN ensures security between customers.

The BigIP can also act in limited capacity as a firewall by performing simplistic packet filtering based on source and destination address. GlobalCenter recommend that customers run a dedicated firewall solution to ensure a higher level of IP security.