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Coyote Point has announced today a new series of application delivery controllers/load balancers, the GX series. Coyote Point was kind enough to provide me with an evaluation box of their flagship product, the Equalizer 650GX.
Configuration
The GX series comes with version 8.5 of the Equalizer code, an update from the 8.0 code released earlier in 2008. Look-and-feel wise, there’s not much difference from the 8.0 release, which itself was a pretty major facelift from the 7.x code base.
Configuration is pretty straight-forward, and the addition of user-friendly (and meaningful) configuration wizards make the Coyote Point. Terminology is a bit different than what you may be used to, such as Virtual Cluster as opposed to VIP or Virtual Server, and “quiesce”, which means the server is active, but not taking any new connections.
Plotting
One of the additions in the 8.5 release is the ability to do plots. CPU utilization and memory utilization of the system are handy, but the L7 and L4 metrics aren’t all that useful. Currently the graph continues to climb, since it’s just counting the number of events that have occurred (in this case, the number of Layer 7 connections processed). It would be better if they were a rate, a function of events occurring in a given time period (such as connections per second).
Plotting a handy and welcome utility, especially when rates are added.
Attention Span
The Equalizers have, for a while now, had the ability to configure the attention span. By configuring the Virtual Cluster option “once only”, the Coyote Point would only look at the first HTTP request header in a TCP stream. By deselecting that option, the Coyote Point would pay attention to every HTTP request header.  Coyote Point is one of the only (if not the only) value market vendor that has this ability: KEMP and Barracuda (as far as I know) do not.
Sliders
Another difference from 8.0 is the introduction of sliders. In the screenshot below, you can see the sliders are used to select variables in the load balancing algorithm for a virtual cluster.
Not a terribly big deal, but they can help make configuration easier to eyeball, as well as give some perspective to make the interface more user friendly.  The sliders haven’t made it into all the sections where it might make sense, and I suspect they’ll be added as updates get made to the 8.5 code.
Compression
Coyote Point is fairly unique in the load balancing world in that in addition to SSL offload cards, the Coyote Point also has a compression offload card (most vendors use the general processor to do compression).
Compression as a feature works by interception an object (such as an HTML file or text file) sent from the server to the client. The Equalizer will compress that object, and forward it to the client as a compressed object.
When a browser makes a request for an object, the browser informs the server if it can support compressed objects. The server (or in this case, Coyote Point) will not send a compressed object to a browser that doesn’t ask for it. Because of this, compression is a great zero-risk feature to turn on (OK, as close to zero risk as you get in the load balancer world).
By using compression, you can greatly reduce the among of bandwidth you send to the Internet, as well as increase the page load times of your users (especially those who have poor connectivity to your site, such as dial up or International clients).
Objects such as HTML, XML, text, Word documents, etc., can benefit from compression (JPGs, which are already compressed, not so much). The types of objects subject to compression is user-definable on a per-VIP basis, and the defaults are perfectly acceptable.
GX versus si Platform
The E350GX replaces the E350si, the E450GX replaces the E450si, and the 650GX replaces the E650si. The E250si remains unchanged with the exception of a price drop (to $2,495), and still is Layer 4-only.
Performance-wise, Coyote Point claims improvements across the board. I’m reporting them below as they were given to me by Coyote Point. I do not have the capability of verifying any of these numbers.
The GX uses faster hardware under the hood, so all GX models claim performance increases (in terms of throughput, connection rate, and SSL). For instance, the E650si claimed about 800 Mbps of overall throughput, while the E650GX claims about 1.3 Gbps.
The GX platform drops all 10/100 ports in favor of going all Gigabit Ethernet. Everything from the 350GX to the 650GX is pure Gigabit 10/100/1000 ports. This is important, because the main benefit of Gigabit isn’t necessarily to push 800 Mbps of traffic, it’s to push 101 Mbps of traffic.
The new Xcel-II SSL offload card boast 8,500 SSL TPS on the 450GX and 14,000 SSL TPS on the 650GX. The E350GX is software SSL only, and maxes out at 500 TPS.
Hardware
Physically, the box is similar to its predecessors, with a 1U form factor and ports accessible on the front. The shell is a fairly reflective metal, and has a good solid feel to it.  Physically, they’re similar to the previous Equalizer “si” generation, although the glowing red logo has been updated to a paw.  The E650GX includes 22 Gigabit Ethernet ports.
Switchports
On previous iterations of the Equalizer platform, the boxes had fixed port assignments. You were either on the Internal network or the External network.  You would use one of those two networks or both, depending on weather you were using a two-subnet configuration or a one-subnet configuration.
With the GX line, you’re actually able to change what network the ports are to be assigned to through the GUI.
Topology
As with the previous generation of Equalizers, there are several ways that they can be deployed in a given network. There are the standard one-armed and two-armed configurations (one Layer 3 network or two Layer 3 networks, respectively). Since the Equalizers are also Ethernet switches, the direct plug-in method is also available, where you plug servers directly into the Equalizers.
The one-armed and two-armed configurations are pretty common in the value market, and they allow you to keep your servers plugged into whatever switch you’re currently using. The server plug-in method is good to leverage if you don’t have a network switch, and is often seen in the switch-based products like Foundry’s ServerIron or Nortel’s Alteon.
In my testing, I use a simple flat one-armed network, where the servers and virtual IPs were on the same subnet, while keeping the servers plugged into my regular Layer 2 infrastructure.
VMWare Integration
The 8.5 code also boasts the ability to integrate with VMware. Depending upon traffic and server load levels, the Equalizer would be able to reboot, spin-up, or spin-down a Virtual Machine. I lack a VMware server farm, so I don’t have the ability to test these features.
Bottom Line
The E650GX lists for $14,395 (double that for a redundant pair).  This is on the high-end of the value market, and Coyote Point by its very existence makes a very compelling argument for the existence of a mid-market, one that exists between the value and enterprise markets.
I found the feature set to be strong, and the user interface to be exceptional. It’s definitely worth a look, and an addition to your short-list of vendors.
