F5 is evolving its core application and load balancing software to help customers secure and manage AI-powered and multicloud workloads.
The F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform combines the company’s load balancing and traffic management technology and application and API security capabilities into a single platform. The idea is to offer a platform-based system that reduces complexity and simplifies operations while providing security for all manner of enterprise applications, the vendor stated.
The package is the evolution of F5’s Application Delivery Controller technology.
“ADCs must support the reality of today’s hybrid and multicloud infrastructures, converging what are currently point solutions to address critical needs such as high-performance load balancing, full web app and API security, multicloud networking, and AI gateway capabilities,” F5’s chief innovation officer Kunal Anand wrote in a blog about ADC evolution.
AI applications, with their intensive data processing and complex traffic patterns, require a new level of application delivery and security, Anand stated. “With the rise of APIs, microservices, and AI-driven workloads, ADCs have never been more critical. The deployment of modern, AI-driven workloads requires a solution that supports intelligent traffic management, provides robust security, and offers unified management across all environments,” Kunal stated.
The package supports a variety of security technologies, including a web application firewall, application programming interface protection, DDOS mitigation, and SSL/TLS traffic encryption.
Key to the new offering is the F5 AI Gateway, which is a container or standalone package that runs alongside an AI application or large language model (LLM) that manages, orchestrates, and secures the interaction between various AI services, data sources, and user-facing applications. It ensures traffic management and communication between on-premises systems, cloud-based AI models, edge devices, and APIs.
The F5 AI Gateway offers an automated way for customers to secure and manage interactions among AI applications, APIs, and LLMs. It’s a containerized Kubernetes service that can be deployed on its own or integrated with existing F5 software, hardware, or services, the company stated. The gateway supports popular AI models such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Ollama as well as generic HTTP upstream LLMs and small language model (SLM) services.
F5 has also added an AI assistant for its NGINX One SaaS-based application support management console. The tool is powered by the F5 AI Data Fabric and serves as an intelligent partner to stretched NetOps, SecOps, DevOps, and platform ops teams. The AI assistant for NGINX One uses a natural language interface to streamline operations and helps customers configure and optimize application delivery, preemptively address threats, and identify anomalies before they impact production, according to F5.
F5 said it will add an AI assistant for its BIG-IP application delivery system. Customers will be able to automate the creation, maintenance, and optimization of iRules while reducing the time and resources required to manage traffic and securely deliver apps, F5 stated.
In addition to the software, F5 has expanded its Velos hardware family by adding a CX1610 chassis and BX520 blade. The Velos CX1610 chassis and BX520 400-Gbps blade scale to multi-terabits of throughput. The F5 Velos features data packet routing, granular security, load balancing, and low latency, enabling data ingestion and real-time data needs for AI workloads, F5 stated.
Source:: Network World