Dell Compellent

Rev Up Remote Replication Performance

Offsite data replication is key to ensuring ongoing business operations but it can be complex and costly, especially when performed over long distances.

Dell and Silver Peak have partnered to eliminate these challenges.

By using Silver Peak's Velocity Replication Acceleration (VRX) software with Dell Compellent's Remote Instant Replay™, you can replicate 6x to 30x more data over any WAN.

No network upgrades, or changes, are required, and installation takes under 20 minutes (see video to the left). With Dell and Silver Peak, it has never been easier or more affordable to meet your Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) while lowering overall disaster recovery costs.

Dell and Silver Peak

Velocity for Dell Compellent

Figure 1. Two customers who reduced replication times with Silver Peak VRX software

Dell-Silver Peak performance testing

The performance data below is a snapshot from the most recent qualification of Silver Peak software with Dell Compellent on a 155 Mbps WAN. Silver Peak was able to repair all lost and out of order packets on the WAN, making the low-cost MPLS link behave like a high cost private or leased line. For details see Dell Technical Whitepaper, Optimizing Dell Compellent Remote Instant Replay with Silver Peak.

Replication over 155 Mbps MPLS WAN

  • Dataset: 250 Gigabytes (GB)  
  • Latency: 80ms
  • Packet loss: 0.1%
  • 8 hour RPO
Table 1: Time to replicate Dell Compellent  Remote Instant Replay over 155 Mbps MPLS WAN
  Compellent unoptimized Optimized with
Silver Peak
Throughput 9.61 GB/hour 300 GB/hour
Time to replicate 26 hours 1 hour
RPO 18 hours over RPO 7 hours under RPO

Silver Peak VRX software

Silver Peak VRX software is made for storage replication. Deployment takes less than 20 minutes and requires no networking expertise or assistance. By combining Silver Peak VRX software with Dell Compellent, you can:

  • Meet Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) – Replicate more data in less time to remote locations
  • Replicate more data – With VRX you can protect all data, not just some
  • Replicate over longer distances – Eliminate distance limitations between source/target devices
  • Improve business continuity – Maintain redundant data center(s)
  • Lower disaster recovery costs – Eliminate costly dedicated networks for replication

Featured Use Cases

Protect 20x More Data over Your Existing Network.

Features

  • Solves network bandwidth, distance and quality challenges to ensure maximum replication throughput.
  • Proven integration. Customer and lab tested for seamless interoperability.
  • Industry leading scalability. Easily replicate several TB per hour.
  • Deployed in minutes. No networking expertise required with storage redirection deployment.

Benefits

  • Replicate faster. Replicate more data in less time to remote locations
  • Replicate over longer distances. Eliminate distance limitations between source/target devices
  • Improve business continuity. Maintain redundant data centers in distant geographies for rapid recovery from disasters
  • Lower disaster recovery costs. Eliminate costly dedicated networks for replication
  • Avoid or delay WAN bandwidth upgrades by reducing the amount of data transferred
  • Secure data in transit with IPSec 256-bit AES encryption

Featured Product

  • Silver Peak VRX software is specifically designed for storage professionals. The software solves common network challenges that hamper replication between data centers with virtual software that leverages our full VXOA capabilities.

Resources

  • In today’s enterprise, users are increasingly distributed while data is increasingly centralized. This places an increased burden on the underlying network infrastructure as a key enabler for various strategic corporate initiatives, such as server/storage consolidation, remote backup/replication, and unified communications. Dell has partnered with Silver Peak to address this challenge. Silver Peak’s Virtual Acceleration Open Architecture (VXOA) can help cost effectively increase network capacity, optimize network quality, and help ensure maximum performance over distance - all while helping to reduce ongoing IT operating costs. The combined Dell / Silver Peak solution delivers LAN-like network performance to distributed employees, making it a strategic enabler for enterprises of all sizes. 
  • As storage volumes grow, it becomes increasingly diffi cult to recover from data loss. Real-time replication between data centers or to a disaster recovery (DR) facility requires security and protection, but it can be diffi cult to achieve within your current infrastructure. 
  • This document describes the configuration of Silver Peak Velocity appliances for Dell Compellent Remote Instant Replay deployments using iSCSI over Ethernet. For this deployment, the Silver Peak Velocity appliance will act as the next-hop for the Remote Instant Replay traffic. The iSCSI adapter(s) used for replication on the Compellent arrays will use the Velocity appliance as the default gateway. The Velocity appliance will optimize the Remote Instant Replay traffic and then forward it across the WAN to the remote site. 
  • This technical report details the benefits that Silver Peak’s replication acceleration software provides for Dell Compellent Remote Instant Replay deployments. This report includes performance results from the Compellent test lab.
  • For Denali Alaskan Federal Credit Union (Denali) to expand its online banking services, enhancing its business continuity plan was a given. However, Denali’s wide area network (WAN) was insufficient for moving large amounts of data between the company’s main site in Anchorage and DR facility in Fairbanks. It was taking over eleven hours to replicate more than fifty gigabytes (GB) of data over the WAN — far too long for Denali’s IT team. Adding a new online banking system with up to ten times the data of the existing system would be impossible. 
  • Storage people are from Mars and network people are from Venus. Despite the interdependencies of the two functions, each group often has its own language, vendors, and metrics which can make it difficult to communicate between the two “silos”. 
  • Silver Peak has a variety of architectural advantages that maximize replication performance across the WAN while minimizing ongoing disaster recovery costs.