New Citrix NetScaler DataStream Technology Addresses Explosive Growth in Cloud, Mobile and Corporate Data

NetScaler is First Service Delivery Networking System to Introduce Native Database Protocol and SQL Intelligence for Cost-effective Scalability and Security

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- To address the exponential growth in cloud, mobile and corporate data, Citrix Systems today unveiled a breakthrough new DataStream technology in its popular NetScaler® service delivery networking product line. NetScaler is already firmly established as the delivery infrastructure of choice for most of the world’s largest consumer websites and cloud providers, touching an estimated 75 percent of all internet users each day. Leveraging its expertise in web applications, NetScaler becomes the industry’s first service delivery controller to extend the benefits of scalability, availability and security for the web tier to the data tier for both enterprise IT and cloud and mobile providers.

Corporations of all sizes today are dealing with an explosive growth in data. This growth is driven by broader trends such as the rise of social networks, video and web, along with the expanding number of mobile and consumer devices being used in the workplace. Providing visibility and business intelligence into this data is placing increasing demands on traditional databases, cloud storage models and unstructured file systems like Hadoop. Together, these trends have created an increasing need for solutions that can effectively scale, secure and optimize data infrastructures.

The new NetScaler DataStream technology addresses this challenge by inspecting data traffic in real time and applying optimization and security policies. It is the first networking solution of its kind to apply native data protocol and transaction intelligence to both structured and unstructured data. For databases like Oracle® MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server, NetScaler with DataStream technology enables enterprises to scale-up their data infrastructure by offloading CPU and memory-intensive database server connections. For cloud providers who experience three times the average client traffic of the enterprise database, creating a cost-effective, massively scalable database infrastructure is also a key benefit. The new NetScaler DataStream technology also helps companies scale-out their datacenters and private clouds by intelligently load balancing SQL requests to the most appropriate and available servers. It also allows customers to set policies that secure, control and audit data access in real time.

Facts and Highlights

• Native SQL Fluency – Using its powerful new DataStream technology, NetScaler now inspects data traffic in real time using native SQL fluency and protocol aware policies for Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL database servers. For Microsoft SQL Server, NetScaler natively parses the Tabular Data Stream (TDS) protocol, enabling integrated policy and control with Microsoft System Center. For Oracle MySQL, NetScaler performs SQL-intelligent load balancing, policy control and comprehensive health monitoring to enable secure, large scale Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) deployments.
• Database Server Offload – NetScaler with DataStream now offers SQL connection multiplexing, significantly reducing the number of SQL connections to backend database servers, and optimizing database infrastructure by enabling database servers to effectively scale-up to host more databases. The ability of NetScaler to offload SQL connection management provides a cost-effective means of database server consolidation and virtualization.
• Cost-effective Scale-Out – By adding native SQL protocol support, NetScaler with DataStream technology now enables advanced load balancing and health monitoring policies to ensure the best performance, efficiency and reliability. By routing all database traffic to the optimal server, companies can even establish custom policies such as directing all read requests to a read-only database server pool. This capability also enables cost-effective high availability by applying advanced SQL health monitoring to ensure that SQL connections are routed only to backend database servers that are performing properly. When combined with a rich set of load balancing policies, including global server load balancing (GSLB), the active monitoring of database servers increases availability and provides organizations with an attractive alternative to expensive database clustering solutions.
• Data Security and Threat Control – Using the new DataStream technology, polices can also be applied at the user level to control access to back-end database servers. This allows NetScaler to inspect all SQL transactions and perform SQL protocol validation and data access control. Data access events can also be audited and logged to meet compliance requirements. As a result, NetScaler now provides a holistic view of the web, app and data tiers to enable comprehensive security and risk management of data across an entire datacenter or cloud environment.

Quotes

Jacob Rosenberg, Senior Technical Director, Content Services, AOL Inc.

“AOL has leveraged horizontal scaling and sharing of databases to ensure scalability and reliability for our important products. With native SQL awareness for Oracle MySQL databases, NetScaler with DataStream technology provides groundbreaking solutions for database scaling as part of their platform which will let us meet operational and business needs in a cost effective and standard way.”

Jarrett Irons, Principal Systems Engineer, Myspace, Inc.

“Myspace employs hundreds of servers to power and manage memory-intensive SQL connections. With the new NetScaler SQL connection management technology, we are able to cost-effectively scale our database infrastructure and achieve greater database density on our Microsoft SQL servers.”

Chris Tolson, Chief Platform Architect, bet365

“A SQL load balancer is an innovative and practical solution to problems of horizontal scalability and resilience for read-only databases. As a large database consumer for high transactional throughput systems, we need to scale out our databases to accommodate both the rate of change in data and the bursts in client demand. We welcome the new feature and are currently evaluating its role in improving this database delivery.”

Doug Leland, General Manager, Microsoft Business Platform, Microsoft

“As the volume and importance of data grows, enterprises are searching for easy to manage solutions to scale their database infrastructure. Citrix NetScaler with DataStream technology offers native support for the Microsoft SQL Server TDS protocol. When combined with its load balancing capabilities, this offers an integrated solution to increase database scalability. We look forward to partnering with Citrix to provide SQL Server customers a solution that both optimizes and simplifies their database deployments as they expand to meet growing enterprise data requirements.”

Cindy Borovick, Vice President, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure and Datacenter Networks, International Data Corporation

“The intersection of customer enterprise data, social data and web analytics will drive at IDC what we call big data. This explosion in content is not only shaping changes in IT infrastructure but is creating demand for network intelligence. By expanding its NetScaler offering to include the data tier Citrix is demonstrating how network intelligence can evolve and adopt to provide scalability, availability and security to next generation public and private cloud requirements.”

Sunil Potti, Vice President, Product Marketing and Product Management, Networking and Cloud Product Group

“Enterprises are increasingly prioritizing management of data growth and relying on data-driven analytics to support important business decisions. As a leader in the service delivery networking market, Citrix is excited to extend its expertise into the data tier via the new NetScaler DataStream technology. With this new breakthrough, NetScaler is the only solution on the market to address the demands of this data explosion by optimizing the availability, performance and security of data infrastructure critical to delivering timely and actionable business intelligence.”

Pricing and availability

The new DataStream technology is available now in NetScaler version 9.3. This new functionality is supported in all NetScaler editions at no additional cost. The new DataStream technology is available on both NetScaler MPX physical appliances as well as NetScaler VPX virtual appliances.

Related Links and Announcements

• Expert Blog by Sunil Potti, Vice President, Product Marketing and Product Management, Networking and Cloud Product Group, Citrix: Title: ADCs - from the Web and App Tier to the Data Tier
• Expert Blog by Roger Klorese, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Networking and Cloud Product Group, Citrix: Title: The Forecast: Cloudy with 100% Chance of Exploding Data
• Expert Blog by Craig Ellrod, Senior Director, Technical Marketing, Networking and Cloud Product Group, Citrix: Title: Load Balance SQL - Scaling the Data Tier with Citrix NetScaler DataStream Technology

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About Citrix Systems

Citrix Systems (“Citrix”) (NASDAQ: CTXS) is a leading provider of virtual computing solutions that help companies deliver IT as an on-demand service. Founded in 1989, Citrix combines virtualization, networking, and cloud computing technologies into a full portfolio of products that enable virtual workstyles for users and virtual datacenters for IT. More than 230,000 organizations worldwide rely on Citrix to help them build simpler and more cost-effective IT environments. Citrix partners with more than 10,000 companies in more than 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2010 was $1.87 billion. For more information on Citrix, visit www.citrix.com.

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