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EqualLogic® manufactures high performance, fault tolerant iSCSI storage area network (SAN) arrays. In addition to the full-featured primary storage and local snapshot capabilities, EqualLogic also includes a remote replication facility to store and update replicas of volumes on a recurring scheduled basis.
The timeliness of replication is based upon a volume’s ongoing page level changes and the effective bandwidth that has been dedicated between replication partners. Silver Peak complements EqualLogic PS Series arrays by overcoming WAN limitations that can hamper performance and reliability. Silver Peak NX appliances use disk based data reduction to significantly reduce the amount of data traversing the WAN and ensure LAN-like application performance. In addition, NX appliances employ a variety of latency and loss mitigation techniques, compression, and Quality of Service (QoS) to improve application usability across an enterprise.
Secure Backup and Replication with Silver Peak and EqualLogic
When EqualLogic is deployed in conjunction with Silver Peak, enterprises improve the reliability of network backups, while dramatically accelerating data recovery.
- Improve data transfer times.
Network Memory™ inspects all WAN traffic and stores a local instance of information at the appropriate enterprise location. All outbound packets are examined in real-time to see if a match exists in the local instance at the destination location. If a match exists, then the duplicate information is not sent across the WAN and instructions are sent to deliver the data locally. If the data has been modified, only the delta is transmitted across the WAN. By delivering as much information as possible from local data stores, Network Memory delivers LAN-like performance across the WAN.
- Maximize WAN efficiency.
Network Memory can reduce over 95% of WAN traffic by eliminating the transfer of duplicate information. Whereas most storage solutions perform data deduplication on blocks of information (64 KB to 1 MB), Network Memory fingerprints at the individual byte level. This enables Silver Peak to detect and eliminate repetitive patterns even when the backup/replication solution is performing similar functions, as is the case with EqualLogic. In addition, by performing data reduction across many different WAN applications, SIlver Peak leverages economies of scale to get more "hits" during the fingerprinting process. For example, Network Memory uses information stored from ongoing WAN activity (e.g., file transfers, email, etc) to make the first pass of a replication appear like a secondary pass.
In addition, Silver Peak leverages advanced compression techniques to further reduce the amount of WAN bandwidth required for backup and replication. These techniques work in both directions of a WAN link, improving the backup/replication process while ensuring that the WAN can efficiently handle a restore if needed. By using compression in addition to data reduction, significant performance improvement can be provided even when non-repetitive information is sent across the WAN.
- Offload CPU processes from server.
By providing compression within the acceleration appliance, Silver Peak offloads this functionality from the host replication server, ensuring better scalability and performance.
- Overcome network latency.
Many backup and replication applications, like EqualLogic, leverage the Transport Control Protocol (TCP) for transport. As a result, these tasks are subject to the latency issues that often accompany this protocol. Silver Peak helps to overcome these issues by leveraging a variety of TCP acceleration techniques, including selective acknowledgements, high speed TCP, and increased TCP window sizes.
- Reduce packet loss and delivery errors.
Silver Peak reduces the impact of both packet loss and jitter that occurs when router links are oversubscribed. This is handled via adaptive Forward Error Correction (FEC), a technology that is used to reconstitute lost packets at the far end of a WAN link, avoiding delays that come with multiple-round-trip retransmissions. The Silver Peak solution dynamically adjusts the FEC overhead in response to changing link conditions for maximum effectiveness in environments with high packet loss.
- Quality of Service.
Application level QoS can be used to ensure that business continuity applications receive higher priority than other traffic, and that the appropriate bandwidth is always available for business critical tasks.
Silver Peak “typically” provides 5x-50x (80-98%) aggregate performance improvements in EqualLogic environments, with peaks exceeding 100x in many instances.
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