The Complete Guide to Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs)
What is an Application Delivery Controller?
An Application Delivery Controller (ADC) is a software that helps to automate the delivery of applications. The ADC creates, manages and maintains the delivery of applications from source code, to the end user.
The application delivery controller software handles the overall process of delivering content from one location to another. It can be a web server, email server, mobile app, etc. The software ensures that data and files are delivered in the most efficient way possible and does not cause any errors during the process. All these tasks are handled by an ADC server which is deployed on a server farm or in a cloud environment.
How Do Application Delivery Controllers Work?
As the number of applications that organizations use continues to grow, so does the number of security and administrative challenges involved in supporting them. Security is becoming a major concern for most organizations, especially as more and more applications are hosted in the cloud. Application delivery controllers (ADCs) are a key component for managing application performance and availability. An ADC uses techniques like application classification, compression and reverse caching to improve acceleration of business applications. ADCs determine security needs as the single point of control for multiple servers.
The following techniques are most commonly used by ADCs to enhance application performance:
• Load balancing: Distributes incoming requests across a group of servers. Algorithms consider server capacity, type of content requested and client location to improve performance.
• Caching: Stores content locally on the ADC, which speeds delivery and reduces server load.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Features
An application delivery controller (ADC) is a hardware or software appliance that is designed to optimize the performance of a given application, or a group of applications. Most application delivery controllers are designed to optimize the performance of a web application by balancing server load and offloading application-specific tasks such as compression and SSL offloading.
Application delivery controllers also often come with other features such as load balancing, application security, and caching.
Load Balancing : In a load-balanced environment, multiple devices are connected to different hosts and make use of the same IP address provided by the network administrator. That way, only one device is responsible for handling requests coming from all its clients at the same time.
Application security: The number of possible attackers increases with the number of services being accessed. For example, if multiple devices are involved in a single operation, it can be expected that there will be more than one attacker. Moreover, as many different software applications are installed on the same device, there is a higher chance for some application security vulnerabilities to exist.
Application and server health monitoring applications are installed on the device. These applications monitor the status of the phone’s hardware and software components. In order to assist in application and server health monitoring, it is important to make sure that all important software components are running properly.
What are the benefits of using application delivery controllers?
Many companies and organizations use application-delivery controllers in their computer networks to help ensure that applications and services can be accessed in a consistent way by users. An application-delivery controller is a piece of hardware used to ensure that applications and services are delivered in a consistent way to users. Application-delivery controllers are also referred to as application-delivery devices, application-delivery servers or application-delivery gateways. A few of the most common applications and services delivered through application-delivery controllers include:
- Web browsers
- Streaming media
- Voice-over-IP
- FTP
- Video-on-demand
- Virtual private networks (VPNs)
Intranets Application-delivery controllers are used to provide access to applications across a variety of different networks, including the Internet. The controller is placed between the user and the application, and it sits on the network between the user and the application server. The application-delivery controller allows users to access applications and services in a consistent way, regardless of the network environment.
How Can We Use Application Delivery Controller(ADC) on Our Business?
ADC, a technology that provides the ability to control the delivery of applications to devices, has been around since the 1990s. It was introduced in an attempt to improve application performance, especially for mobile devices.
However, it was not until recently that ADC became a standard part of many applications. Nowadays ADC is used by many companies and organizations as a way of controlling their applications. The main reason for using ADC is to increase application performance and decrease costs by ensuring that applications are delivered at optimal times and with minimal latency.
