BARBRI

SOLUTIONS

In the previous infrastructure, Thomson used F5 for load balancing. BARBRI chose the Pulse Secure Virtual Traffic Manager virtual application delivery controller (ADC) as a better alternative. “Cost was obviously one of the key reasons,” notes Birdwell. “Also, we liked the fact that the traffic manager is virtual, which meant it wouldn’t require having to go in and drop a bunch of different network lines and worry about network configuration and all that.”

The simplicity of the Pulse Secure Virtual Traffic Manager installation was important, given the tight time frame they were working under following the change of ownership. “There was no shipping time, as there would have been with a physical appliance,” Birdwell says. “Installing the software took about five minutes, and once it came up we were able to load balance something within an hour.”

In addition to load balancing, the Pulse Secure Virtual Traffic Manager includes other advanced functionality for application delivery control, such as content caching, tools for monitoring web server performance, and the TrafficScript customization language. These help the IT keep BARBRI’s web sites performing optimally.

RESULTS

From Birdwell’s perspective, the reliability of the Pulse Secure Virtual Traffic Manager appliance means one less facet of the IT infrastructure to worry about. “The Pulse Secure Virtual Traffic Manager does exactly what it’s supposed to do, and everything that we need it to do,” he says. “The appliances haven’t had any performance-related issues at all. They just run. I don’t even have to reboot them to patch them.”

He is equally satisfied with the support. Early on, one of the company’s sites was causing some kind of overload on the pooling mechanism. “The company had a patch just for us within a couple of hours,” Birdwell says. “And I’ve had the same support person the whole time. He knows our system. So any time I shoot a ticket in or an e-mail over to him, he’ll answer right away.”

Birdwell saves time by using TrafficScript to create rules for managing application traffic, effectively automating tasks that used to be done manually. “Writing a rule eliminates a bunch of different steps that would normally have to be done,” he explains. Tasks that took hours to do manually, such as adding a new site, are now done in minutes, he adds.

He also values the performance monitoring and reporting functionality of Pulse Secure Virtual Traffic Manager, which saves time in troubleshooting. “If someone tells me a site is having a problem or doing something weird, I can use it to run some basic reporting and see what’s going on, such as how many connections are coming in to the site or what the bandwidth is for that site. We can see exactly where a server might be having a problem.” He says he troubleshoots problems in minutes that would take hours without this functionality.

Part of BARBRI’s transition to new ownership has been to give its web sites a more modern look. (See barbri. com for an example of the new look.) Pulse Secure Virtual Traffic Manager was used here to minimize downtime during the transition. “We used it to do a quick server swap in the pool, so within two minutes, we had a brand new site,” Birdwell says. “And we could reassure people that if they didn’t like it, no problem. We could switch back to the old site just as quickly.”

“Without the Pulse Secure Virtual Traffic Manager, we would need an infrastructure ten-fold the one we currently have in place,” concludes Canzi. “We now have a solution in place that allows us to grow and respond to the demands of our customers while positioning Triboo as a provider of outstanding service.”