whit e pap e r

Accelerate Time to Value for

Your Software-Defined Data Center
H o w to l e ve rage the VMwa r e and F5 pa rtn er ship and their integ r ate d s oluti ons to sp e e d deployment and optimize ROI
Data center transformation projects can easily become overwhelming. A software-defined data center (SDDC) requires
automated, repeatable provisioning of many resources
including virtual machines, advanced networking and security
servicesand no single provider does it all. IT organizations
can make the transformation process easier, get there faster
and build a reliable, repeatable and secure SDDC by choosing
deeply integrated, complementary solutions.
For nearly a decade, F5 and VMware have collaborated to
deliver industry-leading technology that helps IT organizations
optimize the entire data center. The two partners co-innovate
to take advantage of each others strengths and enable IT
organizations to optimize the return on their investments and
the business benefits of the SDDC.
F5 offers integrated solutions across the VMware product
portfolio:

F5 for Network Virtualization: VMware NSX

The F5 BIG-IP application services platform helps IT organizations eliminate the obstacles that prevent rapid application and service deployment, and thereby limit agility and
efficiency. The BIG-IP integration with VMware NSX allows
F5s rich set of application services to be automated in SDDC
environments. F5 Software-Defined Application Services
(SDAS) with the NSX network virtualization platform enables a
repeatable and scalable solution for the delivery of application performance and availability as well as services.

F 5 for Business Mobility:

VMware Horizon and AirWatch
F5 and VMware work closely together to help IT organizations provide the best possible performance, ease of use
and security for their mobility deployments. F5s solutions for
VMwares Workspace Solutions, which includes both VMware
Horizon and AirWatch, ensure that users enjoy fast, simple

and secure access to their corporate IT resources. Organizations can gain greater access control and server efficiency
while delivering high performance, high availability and a more
productive environment. F5s customized iApps deployment
packaging technology allows organizations to fully deploy
applications in as little as two hours, and cost-effective
licensing makes it easy to adopt iApps.

F 5 for Hybrid Cloud (vCloud Air):

Continuous Application Availability
Maintaining application availability, performance and a seamless user experience while moving workloads to the cloud is
key to enabling efficiency and innovation. With F5 and VMware
vCloud Air, organizations can route global application

accelerate time to valu e

traffic across hybrid on-premises and cloud environments

to scale applications and keep up with changing network
conditions and user volume. Users can also be directed to
the nearest data center to ensure they get the best application experience while traffic is routed according to specific
business policies. Finally, seamless application failover and
disaster recovery help reduce the risk of downtime.

F 5 for Hybrid Cloud (vCloud Air):

Application Performance and Protection
Application scalability and security issues in a hybrid cloud
can lead to poor performance, and exposure to outages, data
theft and lost customers. Together, F5 and VMware ensure
application performance and high availability by providing
advanced application health monitoring, adaptive compression and SSL offloading. F5 BIG-IP Application Security
Manager (ASM) protects all data center applications against
the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10
threats and zero-day attacks. And IT organizations can implement the same level of security across both the on-premises
data center and vCloud Air.

The benefits that IT organizations realize from their F5 and

VMware solutions are due to deep integrations that come
from the two companies continued collaboration:
Greater efficiency: Workflows allow IT to manage F5
components seamlessly with VMware.
Better protection: Centralized visibility and control
enable IT to protect assets whether they are in the
data center, in vCloud Air or on a users mobile
device, ensuring maximum value and minimized risk.
Future-proof solution: F5 and VMware work
together to ensure their solutions meet IT and business needs both now and in the future.
Reliable and repeatable: Application monitoring
and failover help IT meet SLAs for high availability.
Agile and innovative: Automation and orchestration allow IT to easily respond to business needs and
stay ahead of the competition.

F 5 for Cloud Management:

VMware vRealize Suite
Managing hybrid application delivery controllers (ADCs)
requires full visibility into the virtualized infrastructure. Deep
integrations with the vRealize Suite enable F5 to provide
the application visibility IT organizations need to automate
the provisioning of VMs and the management of F5 virtual
editions. IT organizations can streamline the provision of
BIG-IP services, automate server maintenance to reduce
accidental misconfiguration, and provision and scale services
automatically and dynamically.

The Benefits of Deep Integration

Regardless of whether you buy services first from F5 or from
VMware, you can immediately leverage the two providers
technologies and magnify the benefits of both.
For example, if an organization gets started with VMware NSX
and uses F5, it can later leverage the existing investment in
F5 for VMware Horizon. Or, an organization can begin with
VMware vCloud Air and then start using VMware vRealize.
The whole really is greater than the sum of its parts when
building an SDDC with F5 and VMware, and that means
greater ROI across the entire data center to the cloud.

Conclusion
Many IT organizations have F5 and/or VMware deployments in
the data center today. They also recognize that a transformation is necessary to align the data center with tomorrow. By
expanding their F5 and VMware investments, IT organizations
can accelerate their move to a software-defined data center
with confidence.
Not only can they achieve their goal of building an SDDC
soonerand therefore stay ahead of the competition
they will also see a greater return on their investments and
optimize the business benefits across the entire data center.
Moreover, F5 and VMwares shared vision and joint roadmap
provide assurance that todays SDDC solutions will meet business and IT expectations now and in the future.

To learn more about how you can build the SDDC

of tomorrow, today, visit www.f5.com/vmware and
www.vmware.com/go/f5.