TECHNOLOGY I WAN OPTIMISATION
Removing network bottlenecks for high performing, low-cost, offsite data backup and recovery
How optimising the WAN infrastructure is essential to today’s disaster recovery initiatives, enabling companies of all sizes to protect more data across longer distances, while lowering recurring costs by convergingof storage and non storage traffic onto a single network infrastructure.
JEFF AARON Vice President of Marketing, Silver Peak
As data volumes continue to grow and disaster recovery / business continuity plans become more stringent, the underlying network infrastructure becomes increasingly critical to key storage initiatives. Limited Wide Area Network (WAN) bandwidth, long distances, and poor network quality can hamper the performance of key backup and replication applications, jeopardising strategic disaster recovery initiatives. The emergence of cloud computing and virtualisation only exacerbate these challenges, resulting in hidden costs and a widening vulnerability gap that can seriously compromise business continuity plans.
There are inherent limitations associated with the WAN that make it difficult to perform critical storage functions between data centres (and remote offices), including the backup of remote servers, real-time SAN/NAS replication, data centre failover, and the migration of virtual machines. For example, bandwidth is often limited and costly to provide, latency is common when communication takes place over long geographical distances, and in many environments like MPLS and cloud packets are often lost or delivered out of order due to network congestion. When any or all of these issues arise, disaster recovery and business continuity initiatives are costly and at risk of failure.
The same is true for end user applications, which often share the WAN with storage traffic. Voice, video, file, email, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDIs) are all sensitive to bandwidth, distance and network quality, which often leads to poor application performance in remote locations. The average large company upgrades WAN bandwidth approximately every two years to accommodate growing data volumes and an ever
18 SEPTEMBER 2011 |
WWW.SNSEUROPE.COM
increasing need for real-time WAN performance. Upgrading bandwidth, however, is both time consuming and costly, and often does not address application delivery woes brought on by latency, packet loss and other common issues. A typical MPLS network with 0.05 percent packet loss will never achieve over 10 Mbps throughput per replication flow, no matter how much bandwidth is provided. Therefore, enterprises need to look at the bigger picture and solve all of the underlying network challenges that hamper key business and disaster recovery applications.
Maximising performance, minimising costs One way that companies can ensure that they meet key business objectives is by implementing WAN optimisation. Reducing the amount of data sent across the WAN, prioritising key traffic, and eliminating packet retransmissions improves the performance of all business applications while reducing ongoing telco costs. The following deployments highlight just how much WAN optimisation can benefit key business projects:
A global service provider turned to WAN optimisation for real- time NAS replication, reducing transfer times from 7.5 hours to 27 minutes without adding more bandwidth, and consequently helping the company meet its Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) while minimising IT costs;
With more than 22,000 associates worldwide, NYK logistics is performing mission critical SAN extension over the Internet. By eliminating a dedicated WAN link for disaster recovery, the company is saving over 100,000 USD per year;
Merial, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sanofi, implemented
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