Zeus Technology, a leading provider of award-winning application traffic management solutions, today announced the launch of ZXTM GLB (ZXTM Global Load Balancer), which will allow enterprises to seamlessly share traffic across globally distributed data centres.

ZXTM GLB is a DNS (Domain Name System)-based Global Server Load Balancing system, available as both software and a hardware appliance. It works alongside an internet traffic manager by allowing organisations to scale their internet-enabled services to two or more data centres, achieving improved reliability, better utilisation and better performance. This translates to a better experience for users as they are always directed to the best performing or closest data centre.

ZXTM GLB is based on Zeus Technology¹s award-winning ZXTM product, the only traffic management solution available as both an appliance and as a software platform to run on existing data centre servers and blades and in virtualised environments. The product provides a rich GUI that allows organisations to visualise real-time traffic and data centre performance on a map of the world.

Paul Brennan, Chairman of Zeus Technology said, ³Many organisations locate their online services in multiple data centres, to get their content closer to their users and to improve resilience in the event of site attacks or data centre failure. ZXTM GLB enables the transparent delivery of services and applications from multiple data centres, continually monitoring their performance and availability. It manages users¹ requests, intelligently directing traffic to the most appropriate service point based on current performance, service availability and geographic proximity.²

Brennan continued, saying, ³Unlike the majority of Global Server Load Balancer products available today, ZXTM GLB is not tied to a particular load balancing platform. It functions equally well alongside any load balancer and other infrastructure products and is very easy to deploy and use. ZXTM GLB also provides a far more comprehensive and engaging visualisation of actual traffic than any other product available.²

ZXTM GLB can be used to ensure business continuity in the event of a site attack, data centre failure or unplanned maintenance. It also enables companies to offer a faster, more reliable service, improving datacenter utilisation and efficiency by load-balancing traffic towards data centres with spare capacity as user volumes move throughout the day.

The uniquely rich visualisation in ZXTM GLB allows the company to obtain a clear and accurate picture of activity ‹ where their users are located and which data centres they are accessing. The data centre draining capability reduces system administration risks by draining traffic away from services in a data centre before planned maintenance.

ZXTM GLB is available as two product options. The full version offers dynamic load balancing and disaster recovery capabilities. This means that organisations can balance traffic across multiple data centres at the same time, to whichever is responding fastest and is located geographically closest to the user. The 'Disaster Recovery' version is suitable for organisations that require disaster recovery protection for business continuity. With this option, only one data centre is active at a time; if the service fails at the active data centre, ZXTM GLB sends users to the next available data centre.