http://www.toddwalker.com More than speeds and feeds. Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:27:32 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en At an impressive rate, organizations are deploying site to site VPN for small office connectivity.  Here's a quick summary of design options: 1. Direct IPSec for simplicity in smaller implementations.  Nearly any firewall and many sub-$1000 routers will accomplish this.  Fastest failover to a backup hub gateway can be achieved here ... http://www.toddwalker.com/2008/11/19/byo-mpls/ Sure, you've got most of your servers running Virtual now.  And you've got a couple of contexts on your Cisco ACE.  But how manageable and automatic is the provisioning?  Check out Cisco's Vframe:  Cisco VFrame DC offers a rich middleware platform to orchestrate the provisioning of VMware ESX Server in a ... http://www.toddwalker.com/2008/04/30/virtualization-marches-on/ Blue Coat buys Packeteer for $268M More consolidation means maturing technology and increased meaningful competition. Is this enough for these guys to join Cisco, Riverbed, and Juniper? The big 3 in WAN Optimization have thorough solutions using hardware at both ends of the WAN. I've always seen Blue Coat and Packeteer ... http://www.toddwalker.com/2008/04/22/more-heat-for-wan-optimization/ OK, this one is about speeds for load balancers.  Or firewalls for that matter. Don't get completely caught up in the maximum throughput and concurrent session numbers.  Remember to fully investigate the connections per second (CPS) or new flows data under a variety of enabled features.  Sure a box can pass 900Mbits/sec ... http://www.toddwalker.com/2008/04/18/session-limits/ Nearly all web acceleration features of load balancers can be done on your web server, but they do give you a single, hardware-enabled place to do it.  Browser supported compression such as gzip is a nice feature because there's no additional hit to your web servers. You also get many ... http://www.toddwalker.com/2008/04/16/web-acceleration/ The Cisco ACE module and appliance deliver very advanced hardware virtualization.  Each virtual Application Controller Engine is called a context, which is configured by naming it, assigning VLAN interfaces, and defining resource restrictions. context name  allocate-interface vlan vlan or range  member resource-class-name The resource controls are defined at its most basic by placing a percentage ... http://www.toddwalker.com/2008/04/08/cisco-ace-virtualization/ If I were about to do this over, and this time I know everything I've just learned, would I do it again?  This question can help you sort out activities you might want to stop doing. Brian Tracy says this is one of  his favorite techniques in The Power of Clarity. ... http://www.toddwalker.com/2007/04/16/clean-slate/ Kathy Kolbe has developed a truly unique personality profile that helps you see how you best interact with the world.  These skills and attributes are your source of strength and excellence.  Build on them! http://www.toddwalker.com/2007/04/12/your-keys/ What are you completely missing?  Everyone has large areas of knowledge or skills that they are unaware of.  Perhaps some of it would help you become happier or more effective.  Where to get started? Ask a successful acquaintance. Read.  Read more. Preferably nonfiction or periodicals you'd never ordinarily pick up. Consider the opposite ... http://www.toddwalker.com/2007/04/04/then-theres-oblivious/ Of the issues that seem obvious to you, a few are actually rather unseen to others. Look closely here to identify your unique ability. These ideas and skills are leading you to your best contribution. http://www.toddwalker.com/2007/04/03/obvious-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/