Arun Taneja

1
Remote Branch Offices The Bane of IT
Presented by

• Arun Taneja
• Founder and Consulting Analyst

2
Why Managing Remote Branch Offices is Critical

• Already 60 data generated outside HQ
• 75 of employees work outside HQ
• US businesses alone have 2M remote offices
• Globalization adding to the pressure
• The India/China phenomenon
• Virtual worker is simply a reality
• The situation will likely worsen over time

3
Remote Branch Offices a Source of Pain to IT

• Issues with managing Remote Branch Offices
  include
• Loss of control of data
• Security
• Application Performance
• Network bandwidth costs
• Duplicate equipment
• Shoddy data protection
• Personnel cost
• Difficulty meeting regulations

You can wish it but Remote Branch Offices are
here to stay
4
Two Fundamental Approaches

• Improve the management of current infrastructure
• OR
• Consolidate infrastructure and serve users from HQ

5
Distributed Enterprise Challenges

• Lack of robust data protection methodologies for
  remote data assets
• Extremely high management overhead associated
  with distributed infrastructure
• Compliance issues
• BUT
• Users are happy with performance/access
• Data/user in close proximity

6
Consolidation Brings ValuableBenefits but
Presents New Challenges

• Benefits of Consolidation
• Enables Cost Cutting
• Improves Data Protection
• Helps to Satisfy Compliance Requirements
• Mitigates Security Risks
• Provides More Control, Easier Management,
  Improved Processes
• But Consolidation can create its own problems
• Remote Users Core applications are slow
  over the WAN
• Remote users feel like 2nd class
  citizens

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How do We Cope With it Today?

• Deploy More Local Infrastructure
• Buy More Bandwidth
• Replicate Systems, Databases Files
• Compress Data
• Deploy Caches (Web, File, Mail)
• Optimize Transport (TCP)
• Implement QoS

8
Does it Work?

• With the tools available today you can make the
  distributed infrastructure work but the cost
  implications are too high and compliance issues
  are too severe
• Consolidation approaches have had little success
  thus far
• You must consolidate but without the negatives of
  consolidation
• But How?

Answer Lies in a Wide Area Data Services (WDS)
Appliance
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Wide Area Data Services Appliance
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Causes of Poor Performance

• Limited WAN Bandwidth
• High Latency, Combined With
• Chatty Transport Protocols (TCP)
• Chatty Application Protocols (e.g. CIFS, MAPI)
• Chatty Web Protocols (http, ftp)
• Issues with TCP Sawtooth Buildup

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The Fundamental Issue with Consolidation
Performance

• Mismatch of LAN/WAN speeds
• LANs 100Mbits/sec ?1000Mbits/sec
• T1 1.544Mbits/sec
• T3 45Mbits/sec
• OC-3 155Mbits/sec
• Cost Differential is huge
• 100Mb/sec NIC 20 1Gb NIC 200
• T1 900 per month access cost

WAN Costs are simply too high
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Latency Vs. Bandwidth
0C-192 Pipe
OC-3 Pipe

• Bandwidth Ratio 64X
• Time Ratio 1X

20 Roundtrips
20 Roundtrips
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Issue Latency
Chatty Protocols
Long Trip Time

• If a File Open Requires 100 Round Trips, it would
  take 10 seconds regardless of the Bandwidth
  Available

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5 Elements You Can Leverage on the WAN!
Datacenter
Remote-Branch Office
Branch
Wide-Area Connectivity
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Typical Remote Branch Office
Remote Office
Tape Backup
Filers
File Servers
Mail Servers
WAN
Data Center
File Servers
Mail Servers
Web Servers
Tape Backup
Filers
Storage
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Wide Area Data Services Appliances
Remote Sites

• An appliance-based IT infrastructure solution
• Drops transparently into existing IT
  infrastructure
• Makes remote data and applications feel local

WAN
Data Center
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Business Issues of Remote Branch Office IT
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Many Drivers, Many Initiatives
RBO IT Initiatives
RBO Business Drivers
Server Consolidation
Productivity
Web Apps
Cost Reduction
Server-based Computing
Security Best Practices
VoIP
Business Continuity
Backup Consolidation
Globalization
IT Consolidation
Disaster Recovery
Regulatory Compliance
Collaboration
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Who Owns Your RBO Strategy?

• Central data center team?
• Remote site IT team?
• Networking team?
• Application owner?
• Data protection team?
• Storage management team?
• Security team?
• Compliance team?

The Answer All of the Above!
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4 Insights To RBO Success

• Identify your business issue in detail, NOT your
  technology choices.
• Identify your internal IT owners, get their buy
  in.
• Take an arsenal approach to combining the right
  technologies
• Bite off ONLY addressable, solvable chunks!

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RBO Tech Selection Insights

• No matter what project, step into it with smaller
  site counts and select workloads.
• Insist on demonstrable tech validation from all
  vendors (3rd party or other customers)
• Perform detailed ROI and payback analyses, dont
  ignore soft cost savings they are profound!
• Plan hard for your post-deployment reality.
  Processes and methods will change. Get ahead of
  them.

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RBO Vendor Roundup
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Wide-Area Convergence Vendors

• Cisco (acquired Actona)
• Expand Networks (acquired DiskSites)
• Packeteer (acquired Tacit Networks)
• Orbital Data
• Riverbed
• SilverPeak

Differing emphases, so evaluate closely!
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Remote Branch Office Protection Vendors

• Availl
• Avamar
• Data Domain
• ExaGrid
• Symantec PureDisk
• Unitrends
• All VTL Players
• All Legacy Vendors

Note All these players leverage D2D!
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Summary

• Managing Remote Offices no longer optional
• Important to start with the business issue and
  then determine the technology that serves it best
• No one technology will solve all the problems
• If you consolidate look for solutions that cover
  most aspects of Wide Area Data Services in a
  single appliance
• Plan for the entire infrastructure but deploy in
  stages

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Questions
?

• Arun Taneja
• arunt_at_tanejagroup.com