WebTitan - web filtering appliance

Until  recently,  physical  appliances  have  been  considered by many to be the best and most efficient way for businesses to deploy specialized solutions as such devices reduce the management overhead by eliminating the complexities associated with deploying and managing applications across multiple pieces of hardware. While physical appliances do indeed represent a streamlined and cost-efficient option, SMBs can nonetheless end up short-changed. Vendors of physical appliances target their products at the enterprise-space market as that  is where  the most money  is  to be made and, accordingly, the majority of these devices have not been designed with SMBs in mind. But while enterprise needs may remain relatively constant, in smaller emerging or expanding businesses needs are  likely  to be anything but constant. Physical appliances simply do not provide the fexibility needed  to be able  to meet  the changing needs of SMBs in a cost-efficient manner. Should a SMB need  to add capacity or build-in  redundancy,  the only way  that  that can be achieved  is with  the purchase of bigger and/or additional appliances – something which may not be within their budget. VAs  turn  all  that  completely  on  its  head. While  VAs provide with the exact same benefits as physical appliances,  they also provide an unprecedented degree of functionality and flexibility  that enables SMBs  to  reap the benefits of enterprise-class IT:

High Availability and streamlined backup. Technical and financial constraints can make it challenging for SMBs to develop and implement comprehensive data protection and disaster recovery strategies. Leveraging VAs in conjunction with virtualization can, however, make  the process both less costly and less complicated.

Building  redundancy  into  a  network with  physical  appliances can be costly. Should a SMB run a number of appliances,  redundancy can only be achieved by purchasing an equal number of stand-by appliances – and that can stretch the budget. In contrast, with VAs redundancy can be achieved with only one additional server. Should  the server on which a particular VA  is running fail, the VA can simply be moved to a different server. The process can be entirely automated using the virtual environment’s failover mechanism, ensuring maximum availability and eliminating business interruption.

VAs  also  enable  speedier  and  more  comprehensive change management. Resource constraints often force SMBs  to  adopt  a  patch-and-pray  approach  to  updating and, similarly, configuration changes are also  frequently rushed into the production environment with only minimal,  if any, prior  testing.  In a virtual environment, however, change management becomes a considerably less complicated and less resource-intensive process. Updates or configuration changes be applied  to a VA running  in a  snapshot of  the production environment, enabling changes to be comprehensively tested before going live enabling SMBs to eliminate human or updated-related errors which can lead to downtime.

Creating  and  maintaining  a  comprehensive  backup strategy  is critical  for businesses of all sizes, but  it  is something  which  SMBs  often  find  to  be  particularly challenging. While  the  plug-and-play  convenience  of physical appliances can streamline certain aspects of systems management, it does nothing to ease the overhead associated with creating backups. In fact, physical appliances can add some additional complexities. Since each appliance has its own backup schema, automation may not be an option. Furthermore, the task may need to be handled by a member of a staff with knowledge of that particular device – and that can create problems for businesses with small IT departments. But VAs can make the process much more streamlined. As the exact same mechanism applies to all VAs and as all the com-ponents to each VA are contained within a single file, the process becomes considerably more straightforward. SMBs which  have  previously  struggled with  backups will find that virtualization and VAs open new doors and enable  them  to  implement strategies  that are as comprehensive as those relied on by their enterprise-space counterparts.

Easy capacity planning and high scalability.  IT work-loads can change rapidly and the demands on a particular application or server can increase exponentially with-in a short period of time. Similarly, increases in staffing levels or staff redeployments can also impact the workload on various applications or servers.
 
These factors combine to make capacity planning both extremely important and extremely challenging. SMBs need to purchase enough capacity to meet not only the current peak workloads, but also to meet the estimated future peak workloads – in other words, they need to buy more capacity than is currently needed. And getting the sums right  is critical as should a SMB which relies on appliances underestimate its capacity needs, there is no speedy way to add more. Purchasing additional capacity can also  result  in  resources being  idle or wasted. For example, a business which had 45 employees would probably not want to purchase an anti-spam appliance which had a maximum capacity of 50 users; instead, in order to have room for expansion, the business would probably want  to purchase a more expensive version of  the appliance which had a maximum capacity 500 users. Accordingly, both capacity and money would be wasted. With  VAs,  capacity  planning  becomes considerably easier. Unlike a physical appliance, a VA does not have built-on capacity  limits. Should  the workload on a VA increase to the point that it requires additional resources, those  resources  can be provided simply by either allocating a greater share of physical server’s resources to the VA or by moving it to an alternative server. This enables businesses not only  to easily scale up, but  to scale down  too when  the demand  for a particular application decreases.

In short, VAs enable businesses to become more agile and  responsive,  to direct  resources  to where  they are most needed, to reduce spending on idle capacity and to cut costs and boost ROI by maximizing the utilization of their existing assets.

Straightforward deployments and migrations. Deploying a physical appliance can be a time consuming process: the appliance will need to be ordered-in, wired into the network and then configured. Migrations from one physical appliance to another invariably prove to be even more time consuming and challenging. Given expectations of 24/7/365 availability, simply finding a window in which to complete the work can be problematic. Add to that complexities associated with migrating a data store that  is constantly changing and  realigning  the data  to match  its new software environment, and  the process can become a job of nightmare proportions.

In comparison, deploying a VA is extremely straightforward and the process can usually be completed within a matter of minutes. The process involves nothing more than installing a downloadable image into a virtual machine  and  setting  the  necessary  options  to  configure the appliance.

Migrations are equally straightforward. Should a business need to move a VM to a different server, migration is simply a matter of copying and moving the single file into which the VM has been encapsulated. Ease of deployment and migration both eases the management overhead and enables a business to respond to  changing  requirements  and workloads much more rapidly.

Easy  evaluation.  To  evaluate  a  physical  appliance, a  business must  order-in,  configure  and  install  a  test unit. Should the business decide to buy, it will probably be necessary to order a replacement appliance – and then configure and  install  that  too. Evaluating a VA  is, however, both  considerably easier and  speedier. VAs can simply be downloaded and loaded onto any server, enabling evaluation to begin immediately. Because the process becomes considerably easier and speedier,  businesses  are  able  to  evaluate  a broader range of solutions enabling them to identify the product which most closely matches their needs.

Reduced  acquisition  and  management  costs.  VAs typically cost less than physical appliances as they are entirely software-based and so have  lower production costs. Furthermore,  the  reduction  in  the management overhead  achieved  through  streamlined  backup,  provisioning  and management processes  enable VAs  to deliver a much better return on investment than physical appliances.