NetScaler: Video Balancing
Citrix likes to say that every day 75% of Internet users work with their technologies in one way or another. This is also due to server virtualization solutions that are used to create cloud “monsters”, such as Amazon EC2. The user, of course, does not even know what cloud they gave him, but we are pleased :). However, not only virtualization systems play a significant role in the Citrix business. One of the serious and promising areas of development for Citrix is ​​seeing the NetScaler project - a server load balancing solution, produced by the company, both in hardware and in virtual, as a separate virtual server that distributes requests from the network, ensuring even load. . For NetScaler can be installed as a real server with data or web applications, and the cloud system is not important. The main thing is that the user always receives the requested content in the shortest possible time. We want to talk about an example of implementing NetScaler on a Russian project - the video portal Molodejj.tv.
The Russian portal Molodejj.tv, a product of the Yellow, Black and White group of companies, was launched in mid-2009 to broadcast its own video content. The idea of ​​creating your own online television has evolved against the launch of the TV series “Give Young People!”, The main audience of which are young people - active Internet users, consumers of web services. Then other projects were added to it. Initially, three HP production servers were used to operate the site. One was responsible for the web server, the second - for the distribution of commercials. The main video content, in fact, why users visit the site, was located on the third server. The growing popularity of the site led to quite expected problems: users complained that it was impossible to watch videos in real time, had to wait until part of the video was loaded into the cache.
The site organizers appealed to Citrix partner, the Russian integrator Kvarta Tekhnologia , with a request to help solve this problem. Experts quickly identified the web service bottleneck and offered a solution. The site already needed a more powerful streaming video distribution system, but it was necessary to anticipate an even greater increase in load in the future.
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The proposed scheme of work looked like this: user requests are sent to the “virtual” Citrix NetScaler VPX, which distributes requests to several processing servers. These servers are in turn connected to the HP EVA4400 high-performance disk storage. The ready solution turned out to be very flexible: if necessary, it is possible to increase both the number of request processing servers and disk storage.
As for NetScaler, the license cost of this Citrix product is directly related to the amount of traffic being processed. In the case of Molodejj.tv, NetScaler was originally licensed for maximum traffic of 200 megabits per second. The specifics of the entertainment portal suggest that people visit it mainly after work, and at peak hours (from nine in the evening until midnight) NetScaler’s performance was missed. However, this problem is solved quite simply: in 15 minutes a new license key is installed on NetScaler, and right after that it is ready to “digest” traffic up to 3 gigabits per second.
A significant advantage of using NetScaler in high-load systems is the presence of built-in mechanisms for monitoring system performance and collecting statistical information on the load, which makes it possible to analyze the situation and scale the system in advance before the onset of performance degradation.
The most interesting thing is that NetScaler VPX in this solution worked on a virtual server running the VMware hypervisor. Support for such combinations is quite in the spirit of Citrix: the developers of the company try not to tie one product to another. For example, XenDesktop desktop virtualization solution can run on VMware or Hyper-V infrastructure, the same applies to NetScaler.
In the "Quarte Technology" say that certain difficulties in the implementation of the project have arisen with the configuration of servers running Linux to work in cluster mode with the HP disk system. These difficulties had to be overcome on an already running system without stopping the service.
Thus, with the help of Citrix NetScaler, it was possible to provide a transparent architecture and stable operation of a rather “heavy project”. If you want to try out NetScaler to solve your own problems, on the Citrix website you can download a free 90-day trial version of NetScaler VPX-1000 Platinum, or a modification of NetScaler Express. The latter can be used free of charge for a year, but it has a “ceiling” in performance of 5 megabits per second (versus 3 Gbps in the Platinum version).
The Russian portal Molodejj.tv, a product of the Yellow, Black and White group of companies, was launched in mid-2009 to broadcast its own video content. The idea of ​​creating your own online television has evolved against the launch of the TV series “Give Young People!”, The main audience of which are young people - active Internet users, consumers of web services. Then other projects were added to it. Initially, three HP production servers were used to operate the site. One was responsible for the web server, the second - for the distribution of commercials. The main video content, in fact, why users visit the site, was located on the third server. The growing popularity of the site led to quite expected problems: users complained that it was impossible to watch videos in real time, had to wait until part of the video was loaded into the cache.
The site organizers appealed to Citrix partner, the Russian integrator Kvarta Tekhnologia , with a request to help solve this problem. Experts quickly identified the web service bottleneck and offered a solution. The site already needed a more powerful streaming video distribution system, but it was necessary to anticipate an even greater increase in load in the future.
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The proposed scheme of work looked like this: user requests are sent to the “virtual” Citrix NetScaler VPX, which distributes requests to several processing servers. These servers are in turn connected to the HP EVA4400 high-performance disk storage. The ready solution turned out to be very flexible: if necessary, it is possible to increase both the number of request processing servers and disk storage.As for NetScaler, the license cost of this Citrix product is directly related to the amount of traffic being processed. In the case of Molodejj.tv, NetScaler was originally licensed for maximum traffic of 200 megabits per second. The specifics of the entertainment portal suggest that people visit it mainly after work, and at peak hours (from nine in the evening until midnight) NetScaler’s performance was missed. However, this problem is solved quite simply: in 15 minutes a new license key is installed on NetScaler, and right after that it is ready to “digest” traffic up to 3 gigabits per second.
A significant advantage of using NetScaler in high-load systems is the presence of built-in mechanisms for monitoring system performance and collecting statistical information on the load, which makes it possible to analyze the situation and scale the system in advance before the onset of performance degradation.
The most interesting thing is that NetScaler VPX in this solution worked on a virtual server running the VMware hypervisor. Support for such combinations is quite in the spirit of Citrix: the developers of the company try not to tie one product to another. For example, XenDesktop desktop virtualization solution can run on VMware or Hyper-V infrastructure, the same applies to NetScaler.
In the "Quarte Technology" say that certain difficulties in the implementation of the project have arisen with the configuration of servers running Linux to work in cluster mode with the HP disk system. These difficulties had to be overcome on an already running system without stopping the service.
Thus, with the help of Citrix NetScaler, it was possible to provide a transparent architecture and stable operation of a rather “heavy project”. If you want to try out NetScaler to solve your own problems, on the Citrix website you can download a free 90-day trial version of NetScaler VPX-1000 Platinum, or a modification of NetScaler Express. The latter can be used free of charge for a year, but it has a “ceiling” in performance of 5 megabits per second (versus 3 Gbps in the Platinum version).
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/122097/
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