Compaq 222863-001 Compaq TaskSmart Appliance Servers: Computing Paradigm of th - Page 6

Compaq TaskSmart Appliance Servers: Computing Paradigm of the Future 6 which easily translate into WAN bandwidth savings, vastly improved user/customer response and greater web server farm scalability. "Internet caches are at once a simple and obvious engineering enhancement to the basic publish and browse model of the Internet, and at the same time offer a diverse set of valuable benefits that are not immediately obvious, ranging from acceleration of existing web servers, replacing existing cumbersome file mirroring schemes, to significantly enhancing the performance of Internet browsers over dial-up modem connections," notes Peter Christy, Senior Analyst at Collaborative Collaborative Research, a Silicon-Valley based consultancy which tracks the caching marketplace. These new TaskSmart caching servers, available shortly, will allow any businesses relying on Internet or Intranet applications to accelerate their business advantage through improved quality of service and significant cost savings. Deployed between firewalls and web content servers in server acceleration or reverse proxy mode, cache servers reduce the load on web server farms and bring the most-requested data closer to customers. Client acceleration or forward proxy deployment speeds client web access, reduces bandwidth traffic, and results in significant savings. Compaq will offer a powerful but affordable web caching solution that interoperates with and can be managed within any enterprise infrastructure. Based on award-winning industry-standard hardware, tuned and optimized with custom Internet caching software from an industry-leading partner, Compaq is providing the fastest and smartest web cache server to optimize and accelerate Internet business solutions. Compaq TaskSmart C-Series servers for Internet caching will include an OS kernel that is specifically optimized for storing web objects to deliver blazing performance. They will be delivered in a range of scalability and availability options, rack-mounted, ready for clustering, and transparent to the client browsers. Unique setup and administration tools will make these servers easy to deploy, even in remote offices without MIS support. Tools will be provided to make it unnecessary to send a central MIS manager to install the server at a remote site. Each server will be managed by a client computer via a simple web-browser interface, with simple, easy-to-follow configuration menus and tools to guide customers through the process. Software agents will be integrated into the pre-configured and tuned hardware to allow the hardware to be managed through Compaq Insight Manager and other industry-leading systems management tools. The optimized software will also include other caching features such as filtering, scheduled downloads, and cache refreshing as well as various log file options. Compaq's Internet caching appliance servers will be suitable for any operating environment. No specialized operating system or file system knowledge is required for full utilization and maximum efficiency. UNIX, NT, and NetWare environments will all be fully supported. Beta versions of these products have been in test at customer sites since Q4/98. 0194-0699-A