Scaling Web Application Delivery for Education
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- Europe
Country
- United Kingdom
Product
- A10 ADC
- Radware server load balancers
Tech Stack
- Apache servers
- VMware
- MySQL
- Oracle databases
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Database Management & Storage
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
University of the Arts London is Europe’s largest university for art, design, fashion, communication and the performing arts. It leverages Web technologies to provide a multitude of applications and services to its students and faculty. The university has over 25 websites with interactive content, including bandwidth-intensive graphic applications. Its infrastructure spans two data centers and consists of Apache servers running on VMware that communicate with and retrieve information from the MySQL and Oracle databases on the backend. The university is a vibrant world center for innovation, comprising six internationally renowned colleges.
The Challenge
In 2009, University of the Arts London began a new Web service project to create a new architecture capable of providing optimized content delivery to site visitors. The project consisted of an initial phase: Redesign and build a new hardware/software platform, which included replacing the existing Radware server load balancers whose capacity was maxed out. During the server load balancer evaluation process, the following capabilities were deemed requirements: Direct user requests to the best fulfillment server across both data centers, based on host/URI and server availability/performance; Terminate SSL for HTTPS traffic once within the data center; Load balance any TCP/UDP traffic; Provide persistence when required by the application; Perform detailed health checks on fulfillment servers across both data centers; Provide graceful shutdown of virtual servers for maintenance; Perform slow start of virtual servers after maintenance.
The Solution
University of the Arts London selected four A10 Networks Application Delivery Controllers’ (ADC) new generation server load balancers to replace the aging Radware devices with a higher-performance and scalable solution. The A10 ADCs met and exceeded the project’s functional requirements with additional features, including: Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB): Load balances Web servers across University of the Arts London’s two data centers to ensure high availability. Unlike competing solutions, GSLB is included in all A10 ADC models, without additional licensing fees. URL Switching: Delivers services hosted on the University of the Arts London domain based upon the contents of the URL. Requests are then directed to the relevant servers located in the private address space. Custom Health Checks: Ensures that servers are available and able to communicate with and retrieve data from the backend MySQL and Oracle databases.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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