In the last tip, we talked about how compression and QoS are vital to application delivery. However, these techniques are only part of a complete WAN optimization solution. When servers and applications are centralized, the volume of data traversing the WAN can rise significantly, placing more demands on the WAN infrastructure.
"Data reduction" is a technique which can provide large (as in 10 to 100x) reductions in the volume of information traveling over the WAN. Appliances on both ends of the WAN link inspect all incoming and outgoing WAN traffic and store a local instance of information in an application independent data store.
Outbound WAN packets are examined 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 reconstruct and deliver the data locally from the data store. If the data has been modified, only the delta is transmitted across the WAN, maximizing bandwidth utilization and application performance.
Data reduction dramatically i...
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mproves WAN utilization and improves application response time by enabling information to be delivered locally whenever possible.
On the surface, data reduction sounds like caching because it monitors traffic and stores information locally for future delivery. However, digging deeper, there are significant differences that have a big impact on how applications are delivered. These include:
There is enormous value associated with storing commonly used data locally for future application delivery. This enables application servers to be stored centrally, while maintaining LAN-like performance and keeping WAN bandwidth costs to a minimum.
While caching pioneered this concept, data reduction has emerged as a way of providing much greater performance benefits across a broader application base. For enterprises that require several different types of applications to be accelerated across the WAN, data reduction is an extremely valuable and cost effective tool, which merits serious consideration.
Dr. Hughes founded Silver Peak Systems in 2004 and previously held senior architect positions with Cisco Systems, Stratacom, Blueleaf and Nortel. Dr. Hughes has a PhD in packet network optimization.
