Optimisation
Choosing the best WAN optimization solution can be a daunting challenge, given the fact that vendors use different architectures and implementations. How do you make a well-informed decision, maximize the benefits of WAN optimization, and minimize total cost of ownership (TCO)? As Cisco Silver partners DSS has extensive experience in WAN optimization solutions and our Cisco Certified Professionals will help you find the right solution tailored to the needs of your business..
WAN optimization technology brings three important business benefits to IT organizations:
- Reduces branch office infrastructure costs by facilitating server, backup, application, and storage centralization in the data center
- Minimizes WAN bandwidth expenses and the need for upgrades
- Improves employee productivity and business agility by accelerating applications and improving data protection and compliance across the WAN
Fortunately, WAN optimization is not as hard as it may seem. There are seven primary criteria that should be considered before investing in a WAN optimization solution:
Advanced Optimization Technology
IT organizations can fully experience the three main benefits of WAN optimization through the most advanced optimization technology:
- Advanced compression-Minimizes bidirectional bandwidth consumption
- Data suppression-Minimizes bidirectional bandwidth consumption and accelerates applications by suppressing transmission of data that has previously been seen
- Caching-Minimizes bandwidth consumption and accelerates applications by storing copies of any application data, not just HTTP objects that may be requested by other users in the future, so that the same data does not have to be sent again
- Flow optimization-Overcomes the performance and efficiency limitations of commonly used transport protocols such as TCP
- Application-specific acceleration-Reduces application latency so that application transactions can be streamlined and accelerated
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Dynamic Autodiscovery and Optimization
Autodiscovery allows WAN optimization devices in the branch and data center to automatically discover each other and start optimizing applications. This feature is important because it allows IT organizations to deploy WAN optimization without making any changes to user PCs, network infrastructure, or applications. This process is dynamic, so WAN optimization devices do not need to be specified or configured manually to allow autodiscovery. Most solutions do not support dynamic autodiscovery to the fullest extent; however, a fully dynamic solution such as that offered by Cisco offers a number of advantages:
- Best intergration flexibility with In-path or off-path deployment
- Ease of scalability-Autodiscovery is not as easy to scale in an in-path deployment
- Automated intersite routing- a truly dynamic autodiscovery technique uses your existing network to automatically make intersite IP routing decisions for you
- Automated optimization without single points of failure
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True Network Transparency
Network transparency protects your existing investments and best practices in network and security policies.
Most solutions support only partial transparency. A fully transparent solution not only integrates easily with your existing services, it also saves you ongoing management overhead over the long run.
A true transparent solution should offer all of the following capabilities:
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Application transparency- This capability makes deployment fast and easy because no initial and ongoing changes are needed for end-user PCs and applications
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Interception transparency-This capability allows fast and easy deployment because neither the client nor the server is aware of the existence of the WAN optimization devices in the path
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Preservation of industry-standard NetFlow policy
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Preservation of router access control lists (ACLs)
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Preservation of firewall policies
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Preservation of quality of service (QoS)-Without IP header transparency, QoS and associated features may need to be reconfigured if the packet header information is overwritten
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Preservation of Network Based Application Recognition (NBAR)-NBAR is a protocol discovery and classification technique that relies on visibility to application data
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Enterprise-Ready Performance
Although WAN optimization benefits may be easy to obtain in small-scale deployments, a more mature and stable architecture is required for large-scale enterprisewide deployments. DSS advises you to Invest in a long-term solution that offers the following enterprise-class features and benefits:
- Performance consistency and fairness
- High performance without application errors
- Robust high-availability and load-balancing capabilities
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Router Integration
Router integration allows IT organizations to install and manage single devices at each branch office embedded with voice, data, security, and WAN optimization. Investing in a WAN optimization technology integrated with your routers gives you the following benefits:
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Integrated WAN optimization module-Single devices embedded with data (routing and switching), voice, security, and WAN optimization can be preconfigured and shipped to each branch office, reducing shipping, IT staff travel, and installation costs
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Consistent management interface-An integrated WAN optimization and routing solution reduces the need to train staff, who are already familiar with the router management interface. It also simplifies IT management by using the same support contract and providing transparency of services
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Dedicated hardware and software-Invest in a solution that uses dedicated hardware and software to perform WAN optimization without affecting voice, data, and security tasks.
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Data Center Integration
Although WAN optimization is crucial for delivering applications to the branch office, it should be an integral part of the overall application delivery infrastructure. To meet this requirement, a good WAN optimization should offer the following:
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Integration with data center load balancing- Look for a solution that works with commercially proven load balancers that are already deployed in front of the server farm
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Integration with data center acceleration- Invest in a solution that can be integrated with an application acceleration system that requires data center deployment only: so-called asymmetric acceleration
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Integration with data center consolidation initiatives- Invest in a long-term solution that supports data center consolidation initiatives including server and firewall consolidation, virtualization, security, and application performance optimization
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End-to-End Services
Increasingly, business application delivery requires not only the best features and performance but also a strategic partner that can advise about, install, and support its solution throughout the entire product lifecycle. Invest in a vendor that not only delivers global support 24 hours a day, every day, but also offers award-winning solution lifecycle services, including plan, design, implement, operate, and optimize services.
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