Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) Module

At-A-Glance
What is the Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) Module? The Cisco ACE module for the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series offers the highest level of application infrastructure control, application performance, application security and infrastructure simplification. This solution, targeted at enterprise and service provider customers, helps ensure the optimized and secure delivery of critical application traffic while lowering overall CapEx and OpEx. What Problems Does the Cisco ACE Module Help to Address? Inefficient application roll-out and maintenance Poor application performance Potential security vulnerabilities Too many products and vendors in the data center What are the Benefits of the Cisco ACE Module? Application infrastructure controlCisco ACE provides virtual partitioning with role-based access control (RBAC) to enable resource distribution and management in logical groups within a given physical platform. Instead of purchasing and maintaining an individual hardware platform for each functional organization, application or customer or partner, a single ACE product can be used to provide the same level of service for up to 250 groups, each with dedicated resources and configurations. Access to and resource management of the module or virtual partitions can be segmented based on organizational roles, helping to further ensure that IT operational objectives are met efficiently and cost-effectively. Application performanceCisco ACE family delivers the highest Layer 47 performance in the industry with up to 16 Gbps of throughput and 345,000 connections per second per module. With the highest performance and virtual partitioning, the Cisco ACE helps enable maximum scalability for applications and the user base. Application securityThe Cisco Self-Defending Network promises customers peace of mind by offering defense at multiple levels. The Cisco ACE in conjunction with the Cisco AVS 3100 Series Application Velocity System provides the richest solution for application security. Integrated hardware-accelerated protocol controla first in the application delivery spaceoffers efficient inspection, filtering and fix-up of popular data center protocols such as HTTP, RTSP, DNS, FTP and ICMP. Large, scalable access control with up to 256,000 access control elements permit both front-end scalability (number of users/client applications) and back-end scalability (number of servers/server farms) the applications are destined to. Similarly, high-performance and scalable Network Address Translation (NAT) instances with up to 1,000,000 entries allow consolidation of many large data centers and faster application roll-out. Figure 1. Cisco End-to-End Solutions from the Data Center to the Branch or Remote User

Network Operations ACE WAN Catalyst 6000

Applications

WAE

WAE

AVS
Application reliabilityThe Cisco ACE also offers multitiered redundancy, availability and scalability for maximum protection for your critical business. It is the only product in the industry that offers three modes of high availability with subsecond failover and health monitoring: Inter-chassis: An ACE in one Cisco Catalyst 6500 is protected by an ACE in a peer Cisco Catalyst 6500. Intra-chassis: An ACE in a Cisco Catalyst 6500 is protected by another ACE in the same Cisco Catalyst 6500 (the Cisco Catalyst 6500 has solid redundancy built in). Inter-partition: Cisco ACE supports high-availability between virtual partitions configured across two modules to allow specific partitions to fail over without affecting the other partitions and applications on a given module. What are the Other Components of the Cisco Application Delivery Solution? Cisco AVS 3100 Series Application Velocity System For application acceleration, application security and application monitoring Cisco CSS Family of Content Services Switches High-performance, high-availability modular architecture for Web infrastructures Cisco GSS Family of Global Site Selectors For optimized data center selection and disaster recovery

The ACE also supports checks for protocol compliance, as well as transaction logging and reporting for security forensics. Infrastructure simplification Layer 2 to 7 network integration As a module for the Cisco Catalyst 6500 chassis, the Cisco ACE fits easily into any new or existing network to provide a full and rich solution for Layers 2 to 7. With support for up to 1152 ports and chassis throughput of up to 720 Gbps, the solution easily scales to the requirements of the largest networks and the integrated solution provides a much-reduced solution footprint. Functional consolidationBy consolidating the functions of load balancing, SSL acceleration security, application delivery optimization and more on one device, the ACE derives significant multipliers from bps to pps, while reducing application latency. With consolidation of functions, a TCP flow is terminated only once instead of at four or more places across the network, in turn saving time, processing power and memory. Cisco Application Networking Manager (ANM)The Cisco ANM supports the management of virtual partitions and hierarchical management domains across multiple ACE modules. This serverbased management suite discovers, provisions, monitors and reports across many virtual partitions on multiple ACE modules, making deployment completely transparent. Template-based configuration and auditing complement service activation/suspension capabilities to enable quick implementation of applications. Configurable RBAC delegation of tasks with a matching service API allows concurrent operation by multiple administrator groups across many ACE modules and virtual partitions. Expected availability Q3CY06.

Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) Module

At-A-Glance
Cisco Wide-Area Application Engine (WAE) For branch offices needing simple remote access to centralized applications, storage and content For More Information Cisco ACE http://www.cisco.com/go/ace Cisco AVS http://www.cisco.com/go/avs Cisco CSS http://www.cisco.com/go/css11500 Cisco GSS http://www.cisco.com/go/gss Cisco WAE http://www.cisco.com/go/wae

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