On July 11, 2011 F5 Networks has declared the launch of two new file virtualization appliances along with an entry level offering as well as a midrange product that would feature a 10-Gigabit Ethernet Connectivity.


Both the appliances of F5, the new entry-level ARX1500 as well as the midrange ARX2500 are 1.75-inch in height. ARX1500 which is the successor ARX500 costs almost the same but comes with 8 Gigabit Ethernet ports. These specifications have been made open by Renny Shen, the F5’s product marketing manager. However, the company hasn’t disclosed the exact pricing of its new products but has given a brief idea about the product stating that it might range from $30,000 to $200,000.


Shen quoted, “We think it will appeal to a lot of establishments for whom the ARX500 was really too small.” According to Renny Shen, the number of appliance of the company might range from 1500 to 3000 depending on the software license purchased with ARX1500.


On the other hand, the ARX2500 is uniquely designed for the higher end file sharing environment and comes with a 4 Gigabit Ethernet port and two 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports.


Thus, the gadgets in the ARX line range from the ARX VE having a single Gigabit Ethernet port and a support of up to a max of 500 users for ARX4000 which is a 4U box having one 12 Gigabit Ethernet ports and two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, which can accommodate a maximum of 12,000 users.


Conceding to the senior manager of substructure at video subject provider In require LLC, Mr. Raposa, the guiding of an contrivance having 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces is identical much flatboat in fix to the situation when it is substantial to share traffic via hundreds of merchandise gigabit portholes.


The In Demand renders pay-per-view as well as video-on-demand content that the costumers buy through hundreds of cable television providers like Cox, Comcast and Time Warner. The firm has already installed two ARX4000 appliances of 300TB capacity on its NetApp network. The virtualization appliances by F5 permit the In Demand to create a single domain space for the 300TB capacity. This is essential as it allows the application to expand its capacity as well as performance on demand.


According to Raposa, F5 had started two years ago with its ARX4000 facing a stiff competition from Windows File servers. However, as their performance was not up to the mark, the In Demand used the data migration capability of ARX4000 to transfer the data from the file server to its NetApp NAS. This process took around one month but incurred no downtime. Raposa quoted, “It's not every day you can move 300TB and not have any downtime.”


All the appliances of ARX support the CIFS file system protocol for its Windows devices as well as abides by the NFS protocol for all the Unix as well as Linux devices. The ARX products of F5 work well with all the NAS devices and its file servers. In fact, those willing to add the storage capacity can do so by plugging an additional NAS or file server.