Product category:
Web design and development
News Release from: Zeus Technology | Subject: VMware ESX Server
Edited by the Marketingservicestalk Editorial
Team on 09 May 2008
Rodgers Townsend boost customers'
website speeds
Ad agency Rodgers Townsend has boosted its customers' website speeds by 75 per cent using ZXTM VA within the VMware environment.
Rodgers Townsend is a full-service, business-to-business advertising agency, offering creative online marketing and strategy, along with website design and web hosting Rodgers Townsend's customers include Anheuser-Busch, Monsanto, SBC, ATandT and Energizer
This article was originally published on Marketingservicestalk on 22 Mar 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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To fully support such large and increasingly tech-savvy clients, Rodgers Townsend implemented a virtualised environment to deliver high-quality services, while keeping IT costs and labour hours as low as possible.
The "green appeal" of virtualisation was a consideration.
Server consolidation and the reduced server room footprint equate to energy and hardware savings, but the ease of management was the key differentiator.
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Switching to a virtual environment required a shift in thinking about the nature of the IT infrastructure.
Rodgers Townsend deployed VMware ESX Server on HP Blades, prompting them to question the role of dedicated hardware appliances in a world where virtual appliances exist and function as well as their hardware ancestors.
They required an application delivery solution that wasn't anchored to a box, but something that could be implemented within a VMware environment.
"I have long been a fan of virtualisation," explained Jonathan Knorr, IT Director for Rodgers Townsend.
"It breaks down the barriers between proprietary hardware and software and makes clustering much easier, opening up virtually limitless possibilities.
"For example, virtual appliances perform comparably to their hardware equivalents, and we've seen proof that Microsoft servers perform better in a VMware ESX Server.
"Very important for us is the fact that redundancy is no longer limited to the physical layer".
"We evaluated F5's and Cisco's products, even though neither could integrate with our virtual environment.
"There were problems with each of these and we didn't even look at offerings by Barracuda and Coyote Point because they were simply not robust," added Marc Marien, Lead Engineer.
"We found that none of the competing products were anywhere near as flexible or as easy to use as ZXTM VA, which can be deployed virtually".
"ZXTM VA is unique in that it's the only application delivery solution available as a virtual appliance," continued Knorr.
"Because the software is infinitely more scalable than F5's hardware line, when further capacity is required, all we need to do is buy another licence, which can be received and deployed much faster than any physical appliance".
"Within a day or two, we were able to purchase, deploy and configure ZXTM VA, and the best thing was that there were no surprises," said Marien.
"It just worked, and when we had questions, Zeus Technology's support was responsive and extremely helpful.
"Unlike F5, we don't have to pay $250 per hour for any questions we may have.
"I was definitely impressed with ZXTM VA's TrafficScript from the beginning and the rules that you can write with it.
"It's so quick and easy to learn and in terms of managing network traffic, whatever we can imagine, we can express and implement, immediately".
"The application acceleration advantages of things like SSL off-load and HTTP content caching are essential to our business," said Knorr.
"ZXTM VA is infinitely more scalable than F5's hardware appliances, which is important for our growth strategy.
"As we bring on more new customers, we know we can increase capacity and that ZXTM VA can handle the load.
"Better yet, we can get additional licenses quickly, whereas appliances take time to ship.
"We spend about one third as much time managing ZXTM VA as we did F5.
"In other words, the work of 10-15 staff can be done by 3-5 people.
"This is largely due to how easy it is to use, and that TrafficScript makes it possible to write very sophisticated business rules into the way our virtual environment behaves.
"For us, this means we can leave the office at a more reasonable time, confident that the network is up and running efficiently.
"For our content-heavy, dynamic XML customer websites, we have measured a 75 per cent increase in speeds due to ZXTM VA's content compression, content caching and application acceleration.
"This is especially impressive to those customers who have previously hosted their websites in house and have faced the real difficulties in maintaining high availability during flash floods and denial of service attacks.
"ZXTM VA gives us peace of mind that we can continue to deliver 24/7 up-time for websites and online applications that our customers require for their success".
"Behind the scenes, being able to drain nodes for maintenance is just a great idea," noted Marien.
"For us, it means that our engineers don't need to wait until 3am to do their work, which makes everyone happy.
"It also means we can prevent nearly 100 per cent of all unscheduled outages.
"Whenever we choose to upgrade to newer, faster servers, we can easily migrate our virtualised environment, including ZXTM VA.
"This saves us so many hassles and makes decisions so much easier to make".
"If we weren't virtualised, we'd be spending a lot more on support staff," concluded Knorr.
"We like to have that close control to meet our customers' needs.
"VMware ESX Server and ZXTM VA enable us to keep things simple".
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