Making Do With Less - How to
Cut Web App Server Costs in
Half
Ratnesh Sharma
Oct 2009

Business Challenges
• Increasingly global workforce
• Constantly need to do more with less
• More and more business on the web
• Performance, availability and security
have become critical to the business
Users Apps

Workforce and IT Trends
USERS APPS
APPS
APPS
• Globalization • Green Datacenters
• Flex Working • Security/Compliance
• Branch Expansion • Business Continuity
• Mobility • Web and Enterprise 2.0
• E-Commerce
• SaaS, XML, SOA

Next Generation Web Apps: Rich, Complex, Demanding
More Protocols
Content Sharing
More Blogs
Team Connections
More
Wikis Chatty
More
Team Calendar
Applications
Mashups
More Client
Types
Microsoft SharePoint 2007

Servers: Still Multiplying
Projected Server and Electricity Use
Servers Electricity Use
18.0 120
Annual Electricity Use (billions/kWh)
16.0
100
Servers Installed (millions)
14.0
12.0 80
10.0
60
8.0
6.0 40
4.0
20
2.0
0.0 0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Year
Source: Energy Star Report

“Old-School” Application Delivery
Advanced Content Delivery More Bandwidth Firewall and Data Leakage Traditional Best and
Browsers Services Prevention Load Balancers Most Servers
Web Users Apps
• Apps Still Slow • “Managed Desktops” Costly
• Data Still Vulnerable • Poor User Experience

Exploding Delivery Costs and Complexity
Bandwidth Demands Many Appliances Server Numbers Grow
Chatty Protocols Performance Monitoring
Web 2.0 Complexity
Caching
Load Balancer
Content
Switching
Application
Firewall
Poor Performance
Costly Maintenance SSL VPN
Complex Administration

Maximizing App Delivery ROI with an ADC
Reduced Bandwidth Functional Integration Servers Reduced
Accelerate Delivery 5x
Performance over 50%
Monitoring
Caching
Load Balancer
Content
Switching
Application
Firewall
SSL VPN

Cost Savings of an ADC vs. Discrete Point Products
• Load Balancer/Content Switch (1 Gbps): $10K to $15K
• Web Application Firewall: $24K to $45K
• SSL VPN (100 concurrent users): $20K to $30K
• Global Traffic Management: $28K to $40K
• Caching $10K to $20K
• Link Load Balancer $16K
• Centralized Management $17K
• Performance Monitoring License: $10K
Total Per Single Unit ~$160K
$45,000
70% Less

Reduced Load on Servers
CUSTOMERS
SSL
PARTNERS
• SSL Offload
EMPLOYEES
$2M
• TCP Multiplexing and Buffering
• Static and Dynamic Caching
• Hardware Compression
Supports greater user capacity and more apps with minimal investment

Offloading Web 2.0 Servers
Millions of Clients
• Web/Enterprise 2.0
• RIAs: interactive, dynamic, content-rich, responsive
Team
• Extensive enterprise use cases Team Blogs
Calendars WIKIS
• Require persistent client/server sessions; process intensive
• NetScaler support for streaming
• Proactively "broadcasts" new content
• Minimal back-end server connections
• Service over 2 Million persistent client connections
• Cost savings
• Improves server utilization by 5-10x
Minimized Server Needs

Reduce Servers infrastructure by 50% or more
Before ADC
After ADC
Fewer Servers. More Apps.

Ensured Application Availability
CUSTOMERS
SSL
PARTNERS
EMPLOYEES
• Load Balancing/Content Switching
• Global Sever Load Balancing
• Filtering, Rate-Limiting, and Surge Queue
Obviates needless Web and Database server duplication

Automated on-demand server provisioning
Citrix XenServer
Citrix Workflow Studio
Pool A
Unpowered, bare
Metal servers
Citrix NetScaler Pool B
 Hands-off provisioning of servers
• Tight integration of NetScaler, XenServer and WorkFlow Studio
 Reduces recurring IT administration expenses
 Eliminate physical servers with virtualization
 Cuts Data Center power and cooling demands

Customer CPU Savings Other Benefits
• Improved response time by 110%
dRemate 50% • 40% savings on mgmt. costs
Live Nation 50% • Capacity to support 100X traffic spikes
• Significant decreases in application
SINA 66% latency and mgmt. costs
• 10X improvement in application
Transport for London 95% performance
• 60% reduction in application latency
• Estimated $390K savings in capital
Userplane 87% investment

Accelerated Application Delivery
CUSTOMERS
SSL
PARTNERS
EMPLOYEES
• Advanced TCP Optimization
• Static and Dynamic Caching
• Hardware Compression
Enhanced User Productivity

The Application-layer Threat – Blocked by an ADC App
Firewall
DATA
Cross-Site • Financial Records
Scripting
SQL • Credit Card #s
Injection
Information • Social Security #s
Leakage
HTTP Response • Customer Records
Splitting Path • Employee Data
Web App Users
Traversal • Healthcare Records
Internet Network
Firewalls Web Apps
Web threat is growing
• 82% of web vulnerabilities ranked “easy to exploit”
• 90% increase in reported web attacks last year
• With Web 2.0 the threat is greatly increased

Cutting OpEx: Leverage Community User Group
• ISV Partners/Citrix Deployment Guides-optimized settings
• NetScaler App Templates: import/export complete configurations
• AppExpert Community: freely share with colleagues
Deployment Guides Application Templates AppExpert Community

Successful Web Application Delivery with an
Application Delivery Controller
B2C
Availability Performance Offload Security
B2B
• World-class L4- • Caching • Connection • Access Gateway
L7 load balancing • Compression pooling SSL VPN
• GSLB, Rate • SSL processing • Application
Limiting firewall
P2P

Introducing VPX
NetScaler NetScaler
MPX VPX
Acceleration ✔ ✔
Availability ✔ ✔
Security ✔ ✔
Offload ✔ ✔

Move ADC Upstream into Application Lifecycle
Solution
VPX tiered to match needs
Developer Edition
10Mbps-1Gbps for Staging Environment
Integrated into App Lifecycle Change Management
Rapid Provisioning Support
Config Promotion and Rollbacks
Integration into IDEs and Change Mgmt tools (CMDB etc)
Via tight coupling during app design time, opportunity opens up for
net new offloads designed for the specific application
E.g. Web2.0 Push evolved as a result of similar actions 21
Citrix Confidential

A Case Study: Humana
Mr. Mike Hahn
Humana, Inc.
IT Manager

Company Overview
• Humana Inc.
• Headquartered in Louisville, Ky., Humana is one of the nation's largest publicly
traded health benefits companies
• 48-year history
• 10.6 million medical members.
• Humana offers a diversified portfolio of health insurance products and related
services
• Commercial Individual / Specialty / Group
• Medicare
• Medicaid
• TRICARE
• Transforming Health Plans
• New Services
• Online Access to Health Information
• Leader in consumer engagement
• Providing guidance that leads to lower costs

Humana Network Environment
• Distributed Network Architecture
• Users are everywhere – over 29,000
• Humana network hosts over 3000 servers
• Centralized datacenters
• Web environment consists of nearly 600 servers
• At least 50 distinct Web application “silos”
• Many silos are dedicated to single, high-volume applications
• over 600 distinct web applications / over 180 production websites

Application Hosting Challenges
• Larger Silos
• Increased SSL Utilization with higher application concentrations
• Redundant traffic with higher user volume
• Rate of Server Growth = Virtualization
• Bandwidth Use
• Application Performance to the Desktop / User
• Application performance drops over wide area links

Web System Growth
Continuous expansion in the web environment
700
584
600
500 462
378
400
317
300 248
188
200 129
126
100 35 24
0
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Web Servers VM

Humana Netscaler Usage
• High-availability
everywhere in production
• Cache / Compress by
default
• Use advanced features to
solve business problems
• Full Deployment - all VLAN 159
Humana websites Internal Netscaler Standby Load-
balancer
Netscaler Master Load-
balancer
and External
VLAN 46
• 4 Production HA Pairs Web Server Cluster
Web Server Cluster
(Extension)
• ~3000 Services Intranet (DC1) Intranet (DC2)
• ~1200 Vservers

NetScaler Features at Humana
• Major Features Used
• SSL offload – Provides decrease in SSL processing / IPS
• Integrated Cache – Reduces hits against server
• Content Compression – Reduces overall bandwidth used
• TCP Optimization – Reduces IO overhead for OS
• Application Firewall – Offers protection without added devices
• Responder Module – Reduces number of websites managed
• Failover Server – Provides HA for “hot standby”
• Content-based switching – Modify web applications on the fly
• NetScaler XML API – Integrate appliances into the infrastructure

Reduce Server Resources
• Run more servers and applications with less hardware
• How we did it:
• SSL Offload Everywhere
• Caching Everywhere
• Compression Everywhere
• What we got:
• Less Resource Use = Easy Virtualization
• Less Datacenter Space Used
• Less Power consumed
• Less Network Bandwidth Used
• Almost 50% of Web Servers virtualized – Another 80 this Summer

Real-World Traffic Optimization –
Integrated Cache

Real-World Traffic Optimization –
HTTP Compression

Traffic Optimization
Intranet Statistics
Integrated Cache Optimized Reduction
Bytes 460 Mb/s 300 Mb/s 33%
Requests 3750 h/s 1300 h/s 65%
HTTP Compression
HTTP Traffic 200 Mb/s 104 Mb/s 2:1
Text Traffic 112 Mb/s 15 Mb/s 7:1

Reduce Web Delivery Infrastructure
• Do more in the network with less Infrastructure
Old (2007) New (2009)
investment in hardware Reduction
• How we did it Servers 6 % VM 54% VM
• Application Firewall Load Balancers 13 Pairs 4 Pairs Netscaler
• SSL Offload
• Replace obsolete Load-balancers Cost Avoidance
• Responder Module
App Firewall 4 Devices
• What we got SSL Crypto
• Infrastructure optimization and cost avoidance

Reduce Complex Changes
• Needed ways to reduce the amount of change required to
modify traffic flow
• How we did it
• Content Switching
• Content Rewrite
• What we got
• Ability to implement changes in traffic patterns without application engineering investment.
• Reduced months of work and coordination to migrate web applications to few hours work.

Reduce Support Complexity
• Changing technology requires advanced technical skills
• How we did it
• AppExpert Policy Builder
• NetScaler XML API
• What we got
• User interface easy to understand and train
• API that allows integration of NetScaler into enterprise applications
• Easy for new users to operate

Summary NetScaler Value for Humana
• Use NetScaler to optimize the environment
• Reduce Resource Utilization
• Reduce Hardware
• Reduce Complex Changes
• Reduce Support Complexity
• Increase Performance
• How we get value
• Use Next-generation features for Application Delivery
• Optimize processing on web servers
• Optimize web traffic

What’s Next?
• NetScaler 9.0 features including…
• Web Service callback engine
• SharePoint optimization
• Balancing of outbound browsing traffic through multiple
gateways

Driving Lower Data Center Costs
Server Infrastructure Web App Delivery
Point Products NetScaler MPX
App Delivery Controller
App Delivery Controller
App Delivery Controller
App Delivery Controller
Performance Monitor
SSL VPN
App Firewall
Global Load Balancer
One Way A Better Way
● Server Offload ● 75% lower Power Consum
● Server Virtualization ● Less Data Center Space
● Lower Cooling
● Dynamic Server ● Completely Integrated
Provisioning

Trusted by Leading Enterprises and Web Properties
7000+ Deployments Worldwide

Gartner:
2009 Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers
Citrix Strengths
• Citrix has a reputation for delivering high-performance
ADCs with an increasingly rich set of advanced
features.
• Citrix has well-developed global channel coverage with
a broad set of Citrix products, from server and
application virtualization to AP ADCs and WAN
optimization.
• Citrix's recent introduction of the NetScaler VPX
SoftADC opens up new opportunities for broader
deployment of ADCs, bundling ADCs into development
environments and especially integrating into Citrix
Xen-based virtualization solutions.
• With its traditional software business, Citrix has a
good understanding of the applications environment.
• Citrix is in a solid financial position, with an increasing
share in the ADC market.

CITRIX