Riverbed - WAN Optimization

WAN Optimization & remote worker solutions with Riverbed

Make better use of existing bandwidth.

For many companies, the problems with applications and WANs/VPN's are described as “bandwidth problems”. While a lack of bandwidth is almost always a factor with a WAN, it is not the only factor. Nevertheless, some companies are primarily interested in removing traffic from the WAN in order to avoid a bandwidth upgrade, to reduce their bandwidth provisioning, or to enable other applications (like VoIP or Citrix traffic) to perform better by allocating them more bandwidth.

To reduce the need for more bandwidth, Riverbed’s SDR algorithms store all WAN traffic, in a proprietary form, on disks inside Steelhead appliances on both sides of the WAN link. Thereafter, the Steelhead intercepts any TCP traffic going out across the network, to see if any of that data has been across the network before. If any of it has been sent by any application, then only the new data is sent, along with references to the existing data.

Typically, this approach reduces corporate WAN traffic by 60% to 95% over time; single transactions can easily see compression ratios of 500:1. Obviously, the amount of redundant data that can be removed depends on the repetitiveness of your particular workload. For industries where work is highly collaborative and iterative, Riverbed can significantly improve WAN performance. This is particularly true when large CAD files, PDFs, graphics files, legal contracts, PowerPoint files, large documents and spreadsheets are shared by teams of people who edit and append data to existing files, and then share them again.

Like to try riverbed for free?

Email:riverbed@nci-technologies.co.uk

or Call: 01326 379 497

Serverless branch office.

One of the major challenges facing companies is the need to provide centralised access to company data and applications. For most small to medium sized companies this usually takes the form of a VPN but a problem arrises when trying to access files across the VPN connection. File access can be slow and sometimes unusable, it is often the case that remote workers will keep a local copy of their data rather than work on a file over the VPN.

Riverbed's steelhead appliance solve this problem by optimizing the bandwidth and cacheing data to disk. Remote worker can see as high as 200 times faster file access, as repeat data is read from the steelheads local disk, with only changes being sent across the VPN.

Riverbed's steelhead appliances are a great solution for remote teams working on CAD or large office documents. A single copy of data can be maintained at the head office and remote workers can have fast access to these files similar to LAN speeds. This technique is called de-duplication, the graph below lists typical performance enhancements that can be achieved by Riverbeds Steelhead appliances.

Typical improvements that can be made over the WAN or VPN

Accelerate mobile workers.

Employees in many businesses are now mobile. They are required to be out of the office in order to get their jobs done. That means being at the customer site, traveling to partner offices, or even visiting other offices within the company.

For most users, being out of the office generally means that they are significantly less productive. They have limited access to key data and applications, and co-workers generally accept that collaboration will be difficult, particularly if they rely upon a VPN or SSL/HTTPS connection to access data. Traveling workers desperately search for high-quality Internet connections in hotels and in airports in order to communicate with project teams, keep in touch with customers, and keep business moving. For sales teams, traveling executives, and other mobile workers, poor connectivity has simply become a cost of doing business: they have to work longer hours to get the same or less work done than they would in the office.

With a mobile WAN optimization WAN optimization solution like Steelhead Mobile, mobile workers can now have the same LAN-like access to applications and data that employees in the office have. These solutions use software running on the end-users' machine to connect with an appliance in the data center.

By creating an optimized connection, users can dramatically reduce the amount of data that they need to send over the WAN, while at the same time streamlining the chatty behavior of transport and application protocols. In the case of Oracle Forms, MAPI 2007, and Lotus Notes, these benefits are extended further to the application layer, layer 7, which provides even greater acceleration for Oracle E-Business Suite and Exchange 2007 users. The end result is that applications can run 5, 50, or even up to 100 times faster.

For mobile workers, this means that they can be productive again. They can collaborate with co-workers in real time. Design documents, Excel files, or even large email attachments can be sent at blazing speeds around the world. Being on the road is no longer a barrier to getting their jobs done.

Optimize Disaster Recovery.

Data protection is quite simple in concept: take everything you have and copy it somewhere far enough away to be there in an emergency. The trick is in how to do this most efficiently and reliably. You might have a very labor intensive approach today, but with WAN optimization you can protect more, recover faster, and save money in the bargain.

Replicate, replicate, replicate

Replication has emerged as a preferred choice for more frequent and seamless protection of storage between data centers. The challenge is whether or not your WAN can keep up with the volumes of data you need to cover. You may not have the luxury of upgrading the WAN or putting in a dedicated link for DR. Riverbed helps you replicate data by taking out all the redundant data and tuning the WAN for the high volume traffic, even in the most intensive environments. You can also choose to reserve bandwidth with QoS for other business applications so their performance doesn't suffer on a shared network.

Eliminate backups in your branch offices

Most organizations have used local backup operations to copy data where it resides, but this is a very expensive and risky approach, especially if tapes are being shipped offsite to get the separation needed. Recovery success rates are low, and security breaches can occur. With Riverbed you can get rid of all those tape stackers and optimize backup across the current WAN to your datacenter for a fast, simple, and reliable approach.

Consolidate storage into the data center

You might ask, why do I have storage in the branches in the first place? If the answer is "for local performance", you might consider consolidation to the data center. Riverbed can deliver the data and applications back to the end users with LAN-like speeds over the WAN, and you can centralize all your data protection operations for better cost efficiency and control

Working with your preferred storage vendor

Riverbed can optimize data protection utilities from most major storage vendors.
Including EMC, NetApp, Symantec\Veritas, HDS, IBM\Tivoli, Microsoft, Commvault, DoubleTake and CA

Like to try riverbed for free?

Email:riverbed@nci-technologies.co.uk

or Call: 01326 379 497