A Business-driven SD-WAN Edge for Today’s Cloud-first Enterprise

Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN Edge Platform on Dell EMC VEP4600

Overview

As Enterprises continue to adopt cloud infrastructure and applications, exploding traffic levels and changing traffic patterns are driving them to re-evaluate their WAN approach. The WAN is a key enabler in transforming businesses to the new digital economy, but the existing WAN infrastructure approach based on conventional routers was not designed for the cloud. To keep branch offices protected from threats, all web-bound traffic is backhauled to headquarters-based security services, which negatively impacts cloud application performance. As a result, enterprises are faced with architectural complexity, inconsistent application performance and security for applications and users. The Dell EMC VEP4600 uCPE platform and Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect™ SD-WAN platform address these challenges, helping customers accelerate their digital transformation initiatives.

Dell EMC VEP4600 purpose-built uCPE platform

The VEP4600 is an open networking platform, purpose-built for WAN edge deployments. It is ideal for hosting SD-WAN and other virtual network functions. This single-socket, 1RU platform is ideal for the service provider edge or enterprise branch WAN edge infrastructure.

Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect virtual delivers a superior cloud-first user experience

EdgeConnect virtual is a business-driven unified WAN edge platform that unites SD-WAN, firewall, segmentation, routing WAN optimization and application visibility and control in a single software license. EdgeConnect provides secure and reliable connectivity between users and applications with the flexibility to use any combination of underlying WAN transport services, including consumer-grade broadband without compromising application performance. This results in superior application performance and availability delivering greater business productivity while lowering overall WAN costs.

Why VEP4600 and EdgeConnect

• Supports four virtual network functions (VNF), SD-WAN, firewall, routing and WAN optimization in a single VNF thereby simplifying architecture and management
• Supports flexible hypervisors including KVM, XEN and ESXi
• Supports flexible bandwidth for small to large branch offices
• Lowers WAN transport costs by augmenting MPLS with broadband services
• Accelerates time-to-resolution with real-time network and application visibility
• Improves operational efficiency by centralizing and automating end-to-end policies based on business intent, giving IT time back to focus on other critical business needs
• Accelerates cloud-based application performance with adaptive Internet breakout

Use Cases

As organizations add office locations or expand into new geographies they must extend the enterprise network, often over greater distances. The Dell EMC VEP4600 and Silver Peak EdgeConnect virtual WAN edge platform connects branch offices to the SD-WAN quickly — often in a matter of hours — with very little manual intervention. Silver Peak Unity Orchestrator™ enables network administrators to centrally create and manage network overlays and implement business policies governing path selection, QoS, security and other attributes. For applications that require increased performance over distance, EdgeConnect supports unified WAN Optimization technology through optional Unity Boost™ licenses.

As organizations transition to support more cloudbased applications and digitization, they often leverage a hybrid WAN approach where two or more links (MPLS, broadband, LTE) are used to gain more agility and faster response time to business needs. The combined Dell EMC and Silver Peak WAN edge solution optimizes the hybrid WAN architecture by enhancing bandwidth capacity and network availability, increasing application performance and reducing overall operational cost.