Application Optimization
The Application Optimization module provides a suite of advanced tools designed to enhance the performance, responsiveness, and efficiency of your web applications. While standard load balancing focuses on traffic distribution, Application Optimization targets the actual delivery of content to the end user.
By utilizing these features, the FortiADC can significantly reduce the latency experienced by clients while simultaneously decreasing the processing load on backend servers. This is achieved through intelligent content manipulation, local data storage, and payload reduction techniques that ensure the fastest possible delivery of application resources.
Implementing Performance Strategies
Administrators should utilize the Application Optimization module to achieve the following operational goals:
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Accelerate Content Delivery: Use Caching to serve frequently requested content directly from the FortiADC memory, bypassing the need to contact backend servers for every request.
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Conserve Network Bandwidth: Implement Compression rules to reduce the size of HTTP and HTTPS responses. This decreases the amount of data transmitted over the network, leading to faster load times for users on slower connections.
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Optimize Web Rendering: Utilize Page Speed configurations to automate the optimization of HTML, CSS, and images, ensuring that web browsers can render pages as efficiently as possible.
Application Optimization Configurations
The following configuration modules define the specific rules and profiles used to accelerate application traffic.
Creating a Page Speed configuration
The Page Speed configuration establishes the high-level rules for how web pages are rendered and delivered. It allows for the management of system resources, such as inode limits for file caching, which prevents the ADC from over-consuming resources when handling large volumes of web files. This configuration ensures that the underlying system remains stable while performing complex front-end optimizations.
Creating Page Speed profiles
The Page Speed Profile contains the granular options for web content optimization. Within this profile, you can specify how the system should handle HTML, CSS, and image files to streamline their delivery. These profiles are referenced by the Page Speed configuration to apply specific optimization logic to the targeted traffic.
Configuring compression rules
Compression configurations allow the FortiADC to offload the CPU-intensive task of compressing HTTP and HTTPS responses from the backend servers. The system supports industry-standard formats such as GZIP and DEFLATE. By compressing data at the ADC, you reduce the bandwidth required for delivery while freeing up backend server resources for application logic.
Configuring caching rules
The Caching configuration enables the FortiADC to use its system RAM to store frequently accessed HTTP content. When a client requests cached data, the ADC serves it directly from memory, which eliminates the latency of a backend server round-trip. The system automatically evaluates responses to determine their suitability for caching based on the rules defined in this module.