Load Balancer ADC Migrations

Mangrove Technologies boasts a wealth of expertise in managing intricate enterprise-grade Load Balancer/ADC migration projects.

Our track record includes the successful execution of migrations for thousands of application services, encompassing both inter-platform and cross-platform initiatives.

Load Balancer Functions and Migration Drivers

What are Load Balancer Services: Load balancer services are integral to application performance and while they are classed as a network service, the function they provide addresses the application layer. Load Balancers can provide a number of functions including:

Layer 7 traffic routing and content modification
Server / session persistence load balancing
Global load balancing for multiple sites
SSL and HTTP compression offloading
Server health monitoring & advanced caching
Application firewall and disaster recovery

Business Drivers for Load Balancer Migrations: Load balancers are critical to the application layer. Changes to the application infrastructure may impact the load balancer services, which may trigger a load balancer migration event. Examples of load balancer migration drivers are:

Many legacy load balancer devices have reached end of life and now need to migrate to a new load balancer model
A new load balancer vendor/strategy has been adopted which requires load balancer services to move to a new platform
Servers that form part of the load balancer service are undergoing re-platforming which involves an IP address or physical location change
Server and load balancer services are migrating from physical to virtualization strategy

Key Challenges with Load Balancer Migrations

Load Balancer Functions and Migations Drivers

Key Challenges with Load Balancer Migrations

Understanding the Migration Impact

Load balancer migration dependencies are difficult to identify and have direct impact on access to the application, and performance if the migration approach is flawed
Regulatory governance may require organisations to have application disaster recovery – which makes load balancer services compulsory and critical

Understanding Load Balancer Dependencies for Server Moves

Difficulty linking load balancer services to migrating servers
Difficulty tying in the various load balancer levels and firewalls dependencies to enable successful migrations
Historically, there has been a heavy reliance on specialist Engineers to provide information on the environment

Application Specific and Operational Risk

Difficulty understanding what functionality is used by the application
The given nature of naming structures for monitoring and profiles on load balancers has historically made load balancer functionality difficult to migrate in bulk
Rules and policies that are heavily coded for application performance makes it very difficult to replicate on another providers load balancer services
Lack of Application Team understanding of what services they have make confirming the migration requirements with business units a significant challenge
If the load balancer service fails to migrate correctly there will be a direct impact on access to the application – making any changes very sensitive and impacting business units
Previous challenges with load balancer change work may make any migration effort difficult to plan without building confidence in the migration approach

Redundant Configuration

Load balancer services with redundant configuration can impact the VIP performance, and understanding what configuration needs to be addressed can be very challenging and complex

Key Stages for a Successful Load Balancer Migration

Physical

Global understanding of all Load Balancer devices in the estate
Global understanding of all servers participating in the LB architecture
Thorough understanding of the firewall/security framework and network routing topology

Logical

Understand all load balancer configurations
Servers relationships and pool membership
Application VIP (Virtual server IP) and VIP functionality
Firewall rules associated with VIP’s and interface addresses

Reconcile

Cross check data and sources
Remove inaccurate records

Transfer

Single source of accurate data
Input to Migration Database or use as standalone for Load Balancer migration only

Mangrove Technologies Migration Service Objectives:

Build robust inventories by validating data from multiple sources
Provide a single master source of data that covers applications and server workloads
Enable valid tracking that allows the application owner’s to plan and update migrations
Ensure server, firewall, and load balancer dependencies are understood so that the appropriate actions are taken during a migration
Minimize operational risk during the migration waves

Mangrove Technologies Load Balancer Migration Services

Mangrove Technologies have developed tooling and processes to support load balancer migrations. We offer two types of Load Balancer Migration Services:

Full Turn Key Load Balancer Migration

Program Set up
Data Extraction
Dependency mapping
Migration Wave Planning
Migration management
Functional mapping between different load balancer providers
Service handover
Requirements issue to client’s Engineers
Accurate KPI’s

Load Balancer Migration Inventory Set Up

Load Balancer Inventory Set up with ‘How To’ guide
Access to the load balancer migration data
Data for Load Balancer VIP’s with server dependencies
Accurate KPI generation

Mangrove Technologies Migration Service facilitates bulk or single tranches of migration activity.

LB ADC FEATURE MATRIX

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