F5 Application Delivery Services in OpenStack: What Does it Mean to You?

Recently, F5 has released a number of OpenStack components, including open source LBaaS V2 plugin code, a Heat plugin library, and Heat templates. There are a number of blogs and articles that cover each of these in detail, but what’s the overall meaning to you, our customers?

At F5 we see that more and more organizations are adopting OpenStack for their cloud compute initiatives. We see OpenStack-powered infrastructure running more and more mission-critical services. We know from experience that, if these applications are going to deliver the levels of performance and availability your customers demand--and the levels of security and visibility your business needs--you’re going to need some additional application delivery services.

We also know that most organizations are constantly trying to drive down their operational costs and accelerate their IT delivery schedules. Plus, in most cases, your CFOs aren’t sending down suitcases of currency and urging you to “spend, spend, spend!” on new infrastructure.

The good news is, that by using the new tools we have released, you can provide industry-leading application delivery services to ensure the security, availability, and performance of your applications within OpenStack. You can do this using OpenStack tools, but using a platform you are already familiar with. You can even leverage your existing F5 BIG-IP appliances to provide LBaaS load balancing or Heat-managed application delivery services.

The net result of this is the assurance that your applications are protected, fast and robust, but your operational toolsets remain consistent and manageable. You can sweat your existing IT assets, even within a new private-cloud deployment.

If you’re only using OpenStack for test and development, the immediate benefit might not be so obvious. The best test environments, however, combine the flexibility of rapid setup and tear down while being a close analog of production. The ability to insert the BIG-IP application services from production into your OpenStack test environment improves the validity of your testing and provides your developers with an additional programmable layer that can enhance application functionality, providing application-layer analytics data or additional security.

So, however you use OpenStack, F5 can bring the services you need to successfully deliver your applications and keep them secure, fast and available.

F5 will be at the OpenStack Summit this week in Austin, Texas to meet with customers and discuss the use cases mentioned above, as well as others.