How A10 Networks helps deliver and secure applications in public cloud.

Moving applications to AWS, Azure, Google, Softlayer from on-premise virtual environments creates many potential issues. Many companies rely on load balancing technologies to make their applications highly available and more secure. A10 Networks, along with F5 Networks and others provide enterprise load balancing services that many enterprises and service providers have standardized on. However, when developers move to cloud, especially AWS, there are new load balancing options available in the server create menus that are quick and easy to deploy. If a developer needs to load balance a few servers in AWS they can easily configure an instance of Enterprise Load Balancer (ELB) when they provision servers and they will instantly be able to spread workloads across VPC's, regions, availability zones, etc.

The problem is that App Delivery Controllers have become part of security, compliance and SLA policies. Sure, it's easy to load balance a few servers with ELB and not bother the IT team for an A10 Networks load balancer but there are many risks in this strategy. ELB logs sit on Amazon S3 only and need special coordination with enterprise monitoring tools to incorporate into security and compliance strategies. ELB instances are quick and easy but costs are hourly and compound quickly. Additionally, ELB doesn't include any security functions so if enterprises require Web App Firewalls (WAF) or other tools in their security policies these policies will be bypassed. The AWS WAF is extremely rudimentary, silo's log files and doubles the costs of ELB. Additionally, there adding DDoS controls to the WAF incur even more hourly costs and are seldom aligned with enterprise security standards.

What is needed to deliver and secure applications in diverse public cloud environments is a distributed Application Delivery Controller. The controller must be able to load balance AND secure applications across multiple public clouds and within VPC's and availability zones within clouds. WAF, App DDoS and load balancing MUST co-mingle on a single platform. Since applications can span multiple clouds and availability zones there must be centralized provisioning, analytics and config management. Since multiple groups will be accessing the same delivery controller it must be fully multi-tentnat.

These are the exact problems that A10 Lightening solves. The A10 Lightening App Delivery Controller is a distributed app delivery and security system. Lightening combines app delivery, app security and app ddos into a single platform. Lightening requires zero installation in cloud native environments as the controller is a SaaS. The Lightening controller provides centralized analytics, configuration and provisioning and is fully API driven. Lightening can work with many different types of App Delivery Controllers including NGINX, A10 Thunder physical and virtual appliances and HA-Proxy.

Of course, I am biased as I'm a New York sales rep for A10 Networks but we are years ahead of AVI Networks and F5 Networks in this regard. A10 Lightening was born on AWS and isn't a kludged together OpenStack controller. Bottom line, if you are looking to move to AWS, Google Cloud Platform or Azure and you have high scale applications that demand auto-scale, integrated app security and distributed placement, A10 Lightening should be on your short list for evaluations.

If you're in the NYC area please contact mkatz@a10networks.com for further information. The views expressed here are solely my own personal views.

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Copyright 2017, Michael Katz. CONTENT SYNDICATION IS EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED WITHOUT ATTRIBUTION.