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F5 APPLICATION READY NETWORK GUIDE: MICROSOFT WINDOWS SERVER 2008
transactions, and partners, contractors, and
suppliers all clamoring for access to different
internal applications, organizations are struggling
with access control and enforcement issues.
F5 provides a complete approach to security
enforcement and providing access control for
Windows Server 2008, regardless of end user,
client type, application, access network, or
network resources.
In the past, remote access was provided by IPsec
VPN solutions — a complicated deployment
which required software installation and
maintenance on every client, and was diffi cult
to enforce and control. IPSec has shown it is
unable to keep up with the growing demands
of remote access required by today’s enterprise
organizations. F5’s remote access solution
enables you to easily grant remote access to
anyone from any device, while ensuring this
access is carefully controlled and restricted on a
granular basis.
With F5, access to Windows Server 2008
resources can be easily controlled on an
extremely granular level. For example, employees
can be granted full access to internal resources,
while a trusted partner group can be restricted
to a specifi c subset of applications, and a
contractor group could be locked down to a
specifi c application or port. F5 centralizes this
access control, and makes confi guring and
enforcing this type of control simple. F5 can even
gather device information (like IP address or time
of day) and determine if a resource should be
offered. The F5 solution also includes control
for any access network and any device, with no
need to deploy multiple access control solutions
for remote users, wireless LANs, and the LAN.
F5 supports virtual administration domains,
allowing a single F5 device to be managed by
multiple application teams without interference.
Every user can be assigned to specifi c
administrative domains which defi ne which
objects are visible to that user. Multiple levels of
access are also defi nable for each user, with basic
read-only users who can log on to the devices
to monitor status of specifi c objects and traffi c
quantities to full administrative users capable of
making confi guration changes to every object
on the device. This increases productivity by
reducing the time spent in meetings, tracking
down appropriate administrative personnel,
and improves the ability of application
administrations to manage applications when
it’s necessary. F5 helps streamline the business
process and improve the productivity and
effi ciency of operational personnel.
Business Continuity and
Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery and business continuity are
vital to the success of an organization. Merely
having a solid security platform cannot protect
against unexpected events and disasters that
create a wide range of obstacles, ranging from
knocking out the power to wiping out entire
data centers. These disruptive events not only
cost organizations thousands or even millions of
dollars, but can bring about legal ramifi cations
with industry and government rules concerning
data protection and disaster recovery. With
the amount of irreplaceable, business critical
information stored on the network and in
applications like those found in Windows Server
2008, having an effective disaster recovery plan
is essential.
F5 products are uniquely positioned to help
organizations mitigate disasters and other
disruptive events. F5 is the only vendor
to virtualize data centers, VPN access,
optimization, and traffi c in an integrated
fashion — ensuring the Windows Server 2008
devices and applications are always available.
F5 provides the industry’s most comprehensive
solution for site failover and business continuity.
From performing comprehensive site application
availability checks, to defi ning the conditions
for dynamically and transparently shifting all
traffi c to a backup data center, failing over
an entire site, or controlling only the affected
applications, F5 has the complete solution.
When one of these disruptive events does
happen, even something as simple as a snow
storm that prevents most employees from
making it to the offi ce, F5 provides extremely
secure remote access to the network and
Windows Server 2008 deployment, ensuring
that even though the physical offi ce might be
unavailable, as long as a single data center
is still up, business can continue. F5 remote
access devices support Microsoft Vista and
access to Windows Server 2008 devices,
and even provide secure application access
from Windows Mobile® 5/6 PocketPC and
Smartphones.
One scenario often neglected in a disaster
recovery plan is when the event doesn’t
happen to your organization, but to your
ISP. While many organizations do have
multiple links, they have to contend with
complicated BGP confi gurations. F5 simplifi es
multi-homed deployments so you no longer
need ISP cooperation, designated IP address
blocks, ASNs, or reliance on complex BGP
confi gurations to protect your network from ISP
failures. With F5 technology, an organization
also has the choice of aggregating multiple
small connections together rather than having
to invest in a single high bandwidth connection.
This frees businesses to expand their service
as they grow. F5 seamlessly monitors
availability and performance of multiple
WAN ISP connections to intelligently manage
bi-directional traffi c fl ows to a site, providing
fault tolerant and optimized Internet access.
F5 devices detect errors across an entire link to
provide end-to-end, reliable WAN connectivity.
F5 monitors the health and availability of each
connection, detecting outages to a link or ISP.
In the event of a failure, traffi c is dynamically
directed across other available links so users
stay connected.
Benefi ts and F5 Value