You have decided you need to set up a web farm to provide fast and constant web access to your web sites. The next step is to choose the right product. Everyone, and we are no exception, is claiming that their products are the best. What should you do? Flip a coin? We hope not. A good starting point is studying the features and specifications. Here we like to point out an important but often overlooked feature to illustrate how we take care of the details to prevent any unpleasant surprises.
What is SmartConfig?
Installation and setup on a mission critical web farm can be a time consuming and complex task. To make a smooth and proper setup, WebMux™ comes with a special feature called SmartConfig. It hides all the complex setup and configuration by letting the operator to use an ordinary secure browser to complete up a few simple configuration forms. WebMux will configure itself accordingly. If a secondary Webmux is installed, the configuration settings are automatically replicated for both primary and secondary units.
What is the big deal?
Many competitors also offer on-site installation and setup like us. If a manufacturer is going to do the installation, why should you worry? Well, what happens after the installer leaves and you need to add or remove a server from the farm? Or add another URL? Do you know how to do it? Is the configuration so complicated that you need to hire the manufacturer’s consultant every time you need to make a simple change?
A more important but very often overlooked detail at procurement stage is the auto configuration replication. Some competitors offer configurations similar to the primary and secondary WebMuxes for high availability and mission critical applications. What they do not tell you is that some of them require manual replication of the configuration! Just imagine! It is only a matter of time until the operator makes a configuration change to the primary control unit but forgets to make the same change to the secondary unit. Should the primary unit fail, it is not likely the secondary can successfully fail over due to the incorrect configuration. The whole purpose to have fail over load balancer is defeated!
At AVANU no detail is too small. We hammer out the details again and again to make our products reliable in hardware, manufacturing, and but also in easy to use human interface. We leave nothing to chance.