Owner's manual

2 Intel NetStructure Cache Appliance Administrator’s Guide
What is an Intel
®
NetStructure ™ Cache
Appliance?
Internet users request billions of documents each day all over the world.
Unfortunately, global data networking has become difficult for professionals as
they struggle with overloaded servers trying to keep pace with society’s growing
data demands.
The Intel NetStructure Cache Appliance family provides you with a turnkey,
scalable solution you can place in your network to deliver industry-leading
caching capabilities. Your system is designed for fast and reliable caching for
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), backbone providers, and large intranets.
Why use this caching appliance?
Caching can significantly reduce pressure on busy networks and servers by
storing copies of popular documents near their users. Instead of making multiple
requests for the same document across congested networks to overloaded servers,
users access copies from the caching appliance’s large, fast local cache. This
reduces backbone congestion, provides faster response, and improves the quality
of service.
The following design features make the Intel NetStructure Cache Appliance a
carrier-class caching product:
✔ Speed (the ability to handle thousands of simultaneous user connections)
✔ Scalability (you can easily add nodes to a management cluster as needed)
✔ Fault tolerance (redundant boot images)
✔ Secure single-point administration (you can configure many nodes at once)
See Intel NetStructure Cache Appliance features‚ on page 3 for more information
about these features.
Flexible cache architecture
You can use the appliance alone or with other enterprise software, including other
caching products. Here are some examples of ways to use the appliance.
Web proxy cache
User requests go to the appliance on the way to the destined web server. If the
cache contains the requested document, the appliance serves the requested
document directly. If the cache does not have the desired document, the
appliance acts as a proxy, fetching the document from the web server on the
user’s behalf, and keeps a copy to satisfy future requests.