Application delivery controllers have become a vital tool for IT teams to build more robust applications for employees and customers. At first, simple load balancers provided a way to improve the reliability of applications by switching between servers, but they have quickly evolved to give more control over content and performance and can now provide complex Layer-7 routing and enforce security policies.

So, while they may retain the original capability of balancing workloads, they have developed into a much more flexible tool with the power to transform applications, and Riverbed Stingray Traffic Manager has become the leading ADC for virtual and cloud applications.

When I was asked recently about what "ADCs" and "Traffic Managers" actually do, and how they differ from ordinary "Load Balancers," I realised I had to start back with the basics, and cover the concepts and the inner workings of a load balancer.

Once we have cleared up the basics, we can build up to some of the features that you find in modern ADCs, from content caching, health monitoring and service level management, and providing ultimate control over content and security with Java-based rules, automated content optimization and application security.

In this series of articles on the Riverbed Splash community site, I will cover some of the key features that can make real a difference to your applications, and I'll update this blog from time to time as we add new articles.

1.

2. Introduction to ADCs - Three Ways to use a Traffic Manager

distributed by