Case Study: McMaster University achieves high-performance, highly available and secure Blackboard LMS with A10 Networks ADC

Web Application Delivery for Education Learning System

McMaster University, a leading Canadian research institution serving over 23,000 students, replaced its legacy WebCT system with Blackboard Academic Suite and Vista to support richer e‑learning and collaboration. To ensure high availability, performance and security for the web‑based platform—and to eliminate a hard‑coded single point of failure in Blackboard’s CORBA/IIOP communications—McMaster needed an Application Delivery Controller (ADC) capable of load balancing, application acceleration and Layer 7 rewrite functionality.

McMaster deployed A10 ADCs in a high‑availability configuration, using them to load balance web front ends, handle internal CORBA/IIOP traffic, perform Layer 7 deep‑packet inspection to rewrite HTTP to HTTPS, and off‑load SSL to dedicated ASICs while consolidating certificates. The solution delivered higher performance at lower cost, resolved the single‑point‑failure issue, met provincial and federal privacy regulations (FIPPA and PIPEDA), reduced administration overhead, and benefited from responsive vendor support.

McMaster University

Herman Poon

Systems Administrator