At MMS 2012 this week, we found time to sit down with F5 Networks and learn how its BIG-IP solutions work with System Center 2012 to help organizations maximize cloud benefits and productivity. The company was demonstrating its highly regarded BIG-IP solutions for Microsoft private cloud deployments.
The focus of our conversation was the announcement of the company’s updated F5 Monitoring Pack for System Center, which helps customers optimize resource utilization by discovering available BIG-IP devices and surfacing health statistics within System Center 2012. As administrators shift the allocation of resources, the BIG-IP system is automatically updated to ensure that the network is in sync with changes to computing and storage resources.
The private cloud was the talk of the conference, and the F5 Monitoring Pack for System Center enables the key components of customers’ private cloud infrastructure to work well with each other. There’s a deep compatibility of System Center 2012 with F5’s BIG-IP platform that can help increase efficiency and reliability while helping reduce operational expenses.
According to F5, “Together, BIG-IP products and System Center 2012 provide a clear view into how applications are performing over the network. This gives customers the ability to update and optimize configurations to increase performance, scale, automation, flexibility, and security.”
BIG-IP solutions for Microsoft private cloud include:
The F5 Monitoring Pack for System Center and the F5 PRO-enabled Monitoring Pack for System Center are now available. The F5 Load Balancing Provider for System Center is available as a free download from the F5 DevCentral website. The Orchestrator component of System Center 2012 is based on F5 iControl and Windows PowerShell, and is also free.