HyperIP by NetEx Blog

Solving WAN Challenges of Workload Mobility Using HyperIP

Posted by Marketing

IBM released a whitepaper on Leveraging the Cloud to transform Test and Development. As companies implement software in the cloud on an on-premise platforms for workload sharing, challenges emerge in the movement of that workload between the customer premise and the offsite destination of that data. Does development become hindered if I move that workload offsite or does it have to be in my LAN? Can I move it offsite so workload mobility, flexible system and software configuration, and continuous provisioning be leveraged as a cost effective solution? IBM’s Smart Cloud solution and HyperIP’s WAN Acceleration Virtual Appliance ensures that customers can leverage workload mobility over the WAN, without suffering the performance problems caused by the WAN.
Customers leverage many techniques for moving the workload between the test/dev environment and the customer’s developers. vMotion, Live Migration, FTP, RSYNC, TSM, ProtecTier, etc. All of these applications require the workload to traverse the WAN. TCP/IP has limitations on the movement of big data. HyperIP removes those limitations to significantly improve performance of workload mobility, in excess of 10-12x faster by providing a WAN Acceleration technology that removes packet loss, latency, and out-of-order packets from task. HyperIP then implements block-level data reduction algorithms to significantly reduce the time to move that workload to or from the cloud hosting facility. This all translates to cost effective network transfers and connectivity.

For more information on HyperIP and to request a trial, go to http://www.netex.com .

This entry was posted in HyperIP, and tagged , , , , , , , , , Bookmark the permalink.

HyperIP Series – You Asked About vMotions Over Global Networks….

Posted by Marketing

Storage vMotion is different from “vMotion” where your storage stays the same and you change hosts, or “live storage vMotion” where the host is the same and you change the datastore. The storage vMotion I’m talking about is changing both the host and datastore. Storage vMotion works great on a LAN, but performing it over a WAN is a whole different story.

If you have ever tried to Storage vMotion your virtual machines over a WAN, I’m guessing it didn’t work so well. Most who try to do this are not able to. Why, you ask? Because over a WAN the native TCP stack on your ESX(i) hosts will start to back down. You’ll be lucky to complete a small storage vMotion over moderate distance in several hours, if at all. We have several customers who have tried this natively and have run into problems.  Now they use HyperIP WAN Optimization virtual appliance to mitigate performance issues making long distance vMotion a reality.

One of our customers, a large ‘financial’ enterprise level corporation, has been using HyperIP for their storage vMotions for well over a year now. When they first realized they had a need to migrate VM’s over their WAN, they would start a storage vMotion at the end of the day, expecting it to be completed when they came into the office the next day.  What they found is that in almost all attempts, the vMotion failed. They installed HyperIP and instantly they were vMotioning thousands of VM’s over their WAN between data centers. Last time we spoke to them, they had storage vMotioned over 1200 VM’s using HyperIP. They now do this on a regular basis. Before HyperIP they were lucky to get a single vMotion to finish.

Being able to move a VM at high speed anywhere in the world at anytime can have a profound impact on the way you do business and the way that your IT infrastructure is built and managed. You can build and configure VM’s locally at your corporate IT data center and HyperIP storage vMotion them out to where they need to go. If you are consolidating data centers or branch offices, you’ll need to move those VM’s over your WAN, or even a small internet link. If your organization is building dozens, hundreds, or thousands of VM’s, you’ll want to use HyperIP to move them.

In conclusion, HyperIP is downloadable, easy to implement, has a very small VM footprint, is inexpensive, and most important of all is absolutely necessary to storage vMotion your VM’s over a WAN. Download HyperIP now to start your free 30 day evaluation to take advantage your new ability to storage vMotion your VM’s anywhere in the world. Click the big orange box above to start the download process.

This entry was posted in HyperIP, and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , Bookmark the permalink.

HyperIP Series – You Asked About TSM Testing with HyperIP..

Posted by DaveHuhne

We recently had an opportunity to test IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) Client to a TSM Server in our HyperIP lab. When doing any kind of application verification or performance testing it is important to first determine the overall limits of the native application with and without WAN acceleration.

Lab testing in an emulated environment is a good way to test applications because you can mimic certain network topologies and characteristics. In our case the HyperIP lab consists of two HyperIP WAN Optimization virtual appliances, two windows servers, and a distance simulator for the WAN. The simulator has the ability to inject packet loss, network latency and other network conditions over various bandwidths that can degrade application performance.

The main objective with any test is to try to validate whether the HyperIP can accelerate the application over various distances with varying latency and packet loss scenarios. Every application has its own performance characteristics and limitations. The same is true for WAN networks. They are about as unique as fingerprints.

Like many backup applications TSM was designed for the data center and performs very well when moving data short distances. Since we are truly becoming a global society is it important to be able to move data over longer distances which is clearly a requirement of cloud storage environments.

With the case of IBM TSM, we started off testing with a simple delay of 10 ms round trip time (RTT). At this relatively short distance TSM slowed by 80% compared to its native performance. This is typical application degradation due primarily to the inefficiencies of the TCP transport and not necessarily the fault of the TSM application. When HyperIP was added to the configuration, the TSM application was able to achieve throughput equivalent to native performance and no delay. In fact HyperIP was able to help TSM achieve near native performance rates at distances represented by 40 ms RTT, 80 ms RTT, 320 ms RTT all the way up to a 1 second RTT. This is a testament to how well TSM and HyperIP interoperate together.

Many applications have internal limitations such as outstanding operations, queue size, or queue depth that artificially restrict the application’s ability to maximize throughput. That was certainly not the case with TSM. TSM can certainly pump data over the network when it is not encumbered with TCP performance issues. When operating TSM with HyperIP, the two combined can sustain the same throughput rates whether running across town, across the ocean, or around the world. That was very impressive. TSM over HyperIP brings LAN-like performance to WAN-based remote backups.

 

This entry was posted in HyperIP, and tagged , , , , , , , , , , Bookmark the permalink.

A Blog about a Blog, Is that Allowed?

Posted by Marketing

This weeks blog is about a blog post by Justin Paul, a systems engineer from SMS proTech who focuses on virtualization, storage, and backup applications.

Justin was recently working with a customer who was trying to replicate large amounts of data with limited replication windows and a limited amount of bandwidth.  The customer was using Veeam’s Backup & Replication software.

The big question they were confronted with was whether to add more bandwidth to meet the increasing data demands of replication or as an alternative leverage a WAN Optimization solution with the Veeam application in order to better utilize the existing WAN infrastructure.

Fortunately for the customer, they decided to try HyperIP WAN Optimization Virtual Appliance software with Veeam’s Backup & Replication software. The results speak for themselves.

Here’s a link to Justin’s IT Blog post, we thought it was well written and very informative.

Justin blogs are personal in nature and do not reflect the views of SMS proTech.   Can’t be all that bad for a guy who collects vintage Mustang cars, makes his own beer and is not a stranger to putting in long hours and hard work. Here’s more about Justin’s Bio.

We appreciate the blog….

 

This entry was posted in HyperIP, and tagged , , , , , , Bookmark the permalink.

HyperIP Series – You Asked About Multiple Interfaces….

Posted by DaveHuhne

Everybody tells me this is going to be easy so I’m finally going to try HyperIP. Now let me see again where is the HyperIP website. Okay I’ve downloaded the OVF file, now what? Oh yeah, I need to watch the HyperIP Support Tutorial videos on their website. Very cool, these HyperIP guys sure try and make it easy for us rookies. I like that.

Now what’s next? Oh install the Virtual Appliance on my virtual platform (VMware ESX or Microsoft Hyper-V) and start configuring. Makes sense. Wait a moment it looks like I need management and data ports. I only have one NIC on my server. Hmmm… what do I do now?

We’ve heard this type of story a few times and want to take this opportunity to clarify some interface points. HyperIP has two interfaces; a data and management port. The data interface is used for all traffic using the HyperIP tunnel and may also be used to manage HyperIP. The management port is available when a separate management network is required. If the management interface is used, be sure to set up routing in the HyperIP so traffic takes the proper path.

Okay I have my management and data ports configured and am having trouble sending any traffic, what’s up? The most common issue we’ve seen here is from the interfaces being on the same network. The management and data ports cannot exist on the same subnet. If a second subnet is not available, use only the data port in your configuration.

Okay I have my management port pointing out the WAN and the data port on the LAN, why aren’t the HyperIPs able to communicate? The HyperIPs only talk to each other on the data interfaces. No traffic flows between the data and management ports.

Okay I have the two interfaces configured on the networks that will be sending traffic across HyperIP and only some servers can communicate. Why is that? HyperIP acts like a one-armed router where traffic using HyperIP comes in, and is sent out, on the same data interface. The data interface will be used for servers and storage that will utilize HyperIP. If the HyperIP cannot be placed in the same network as the servers and storage, routes or access lists can be used in routers to direct traffic at HyperIP.

Alright I have both interfaces configured to the same VLAN and one NIC card. That should work shouldn’t it? The data and management interfaces cannot be on the same network. In this situation, only use the data interface for traffic and management. You will need to set user access to allow a browser on the data port.

Well I think that has answered my management questions.
Thanks very much HyperIP.

 

This entry was posted in HyperIP, and tagged , , , , , , , , , , Bookmark the permalink.

HyperIP Series – Works Great with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM)…

Posted by Marketing

Enterprise Remote Backup has become more of a reality than a perception with the advent of enterprise-class backup apps like Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM).  Building a central information archive using TSM Client to Server backups and restores can now be done over the WAN with the HyperIP WAN Optimization Virtual Appliance.  Case studies, such as this one, Triangle-Ireland, talk about reducing backup and recovery windows between 50%-90% over the existing WAN. Significant flexibility with software because HyperIP scales its virtual footprint from 1Mbs-800Mbs in the same virtual appliance.  This allows for a typical hub & spoke architecture from numerous remote sites back to a data center or offsite public or private cloud storage provider.  Whether there are 10 remote sites or 400, HyperIP scales to meet with the RTO’s of every site, cluster, or server, virtualized or not.

Tivoli Storage Manager Client or Server software has network tuning parameters and on-board compression as noted in: TSM Performance Tuning Guide.  TSM can offload TCP tuning and data compression to HyperIP to recover those precious cycles on their resident servers.  HyperIP has the ability to take over session management of the IP data stream and implement software-based, adaptive, block-level compression with no impact on the TSM servers.

For Best Practices for Deploying Tivoli Storage Manager over HyperIP, check out our documentation link: Best Practices for HyperIP Deployment.

Don’t just deploy Enterprise Remote Backup, but HyperIP it.
HyperIP is proud to be “Ready for IBM Tivoli” certified.

This entry was posted in HyperIP, and tagged , , , , , , , , Bookmark the permalink.

When gambling many times the River Card does not help ….

Posted by Marketing

An enterprise online gaming company uses HyperIP WAN Optimization virtual appliance for global replication acceleration. The company started off using the HyperIP appliance, liked it so much that they migrated to the virtual version of HyperIP which in their environment runs on VMware ESXi. For them, the HyperIP WAN Optimization virtual appliance solution is very cost effective, very easy to implement and provides the ability to scale with software as transfer requirements increase. Everybody likes a little investment protection, right?

So what problem was this company trying to solve? Like many other global enterprises they were challenged with their disaster recovery processes. They used the public internet to move terabytes of data during replication but found it increasingly difficult to meet recovery time objectives as mandated by their disaster recovery plans. The public internet was much less expensive than dedicated circuits but was hampered by latency, packet loss and out of order issues. The company also wanted to reduce their transfer windows, and at the same time deliver more efficient use of current WAN resources, and control bandwidth costs.

The customer uses EMC SRDF/A between sites and added Oracle DataGuard as a second replication application between sites. They tested Oracle DataGuard without informing anyone from NetEx and as expected, HyperIP worked like a charm. The point is, it is pretty easy to add additional applications to operate with HyperIP.

Did the customer try any other WAN Optimization solutions? Yes they tried Riverbed Steelhead appliances but decided to keep using HyperIP because of the significant performance advantage and the cost effectiveness of the software solution.

At the end of the day HyperIP helped this online gaming customer reduce replication, backups and migrations time frames by as much as 60%. The fact that HyperIP was a VMware Ready solution is extremely important to this customer. With a HyperIP WAN Optimization virtual appliance solution the customer is happy with the ease of deployment, lost cost, ease of support and maintenance, ease of integration into their existing virtual environment, including the speed of deployment of newly created virtual machines.

This customer is very satisfied with their HyperIP WAN Optimization virtual appliance solution.

Portions of this case study are sourced from:
TechValidate Survey of a Large Enterprise Hospitality Company
http://www.techvalidate.com/product-research/netex-hyperip/case-studies/AD1-EFB-F91

This entry was posted in HyperIP, and tagged , , , , , , , , , Bookmark the permalink.

Goes together like PB & J

Posted by Marketing

Here is a brief success story about a Financial Services Company that uses HyperIP WAN Optimization virtual appliance to optimize their Veeam Backup & Replication.

The company uses a DS3 circuit between data centers and carves out an 8 Mb MPLS circuit for replication and SQL log file transfers. Packet loss and excessive latency was causing poor application performance.

From a high level standpoint, they wanted to improve Veeam Backup & Replication performance, reduce bandwidth costs by using their existing WAN more efficiently, and provide a disaster recovery program that they could rely upon.

HyperIP was downloaded from the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace (VAM) and installed on two existing VMware servers. In a very short period of time the customer’s IT architect installed HyperIP  and shortly thereafter was optimizing the Veeam Backup & Replication. Citrix WANscaler was also tested but the customer selected HyperIP for a variety of reasons:

Using a virtual infrastructure and virtual appliance provided ease of deployment, low cost of deployment, ease of integration into the existing infrastructure and the speed of deployment for newly created virtual machines.

For this customer it was extremely important that HyperIP was certified as VMware Ready versus other products. Customer Quotation – IT Infrastructure engineer:

“HyperIP did what I needed it to do at a fraction of the cost of the competition. Ease of implementation, good documentation, and pleasant experiences with support. HyperIP reduced the time to replicate VMware VMs by more than 80% while using less bandwidth. It was easy to implement due to good documentation and responsive tech support. The cost of increasing bandwidth was significantly higher than the cost of HyperIP.”

So with HyperIP and Veeam Backup & Replication this company has a replication (disaster recovery) solution they are happy with, are getting better WAN throughput and performance and are reducing costs by leveraging their existing infrastructure.

Download and test HyperIP for yourself at – http://www.netex.com/hyperip/evaluation-request

Portions of this case study are sourced from:
TechValidate Survey of a Medium Enterprise Financial Services Company
http://www.techvalidate.com/product-research/netex-hyperip/case-studies/FDC-B76-71E

 

This entry was posted in HyperIP, and tagged , , , , , , , , , , Bookmark the permalink.

HyperIP’s ‘Thin’ Virtual Appliance Footprint Comparison

Posted by Marketing

Building a virtual appliance to leverage the advantages of consolidation of server resources has obviously exploded. The idea of implementing WAN optimization in a virtual appliance has become more of a necessity than a luxury. VMware has created Best Practices for virtual appliance deployment including information for required processors, memory, disk space for the expanded image, NIC’s, etc. Is it cost effective to implement a virtual appliance versus a standalone WAN Optimization controller? Not always, so it pays to do some homework. HyperIP’s virtual footprint looks like this versus others.

The WAN Optimization footprints for Riverbed, Silver Peak and Blue Coat are so large they  almost negate the ability for the customer to deploy them in a remote or branch office just because of the sheer size. HyperIP has the smallest virtual machine footprint of any WAN Optimization virtual appliance which equates to a cost effective solution. The same ‘thin’ foot print scales from 1.5 Mb/s to 800 Mb/s which provides scalability and investment protection. Check it out for yourself. Download the OVF through VMware’s Virtual Appliance Marketplace or at www.netex.com.

Specifications for Virtualized WAN Optimizers:

Virtual Steelhead: http://www.riverbed.com/us/assets/media/documents/data_sheets/SpecSheet-Riverbed_VirtualSteelhead.pdf

Silver-Peak VX: http://www.silver-peak.com/assets/download/pdfpub/ds_SilverPeak_VX.pdf

Blue Coat Proxy-SG VA: http://bluecoat.com/products/sg/virtualappliance look under specifications.

This entry was posted in HyperIP, and tagged , , , , Bookmark the permalink.

Oh Canada, Bandwidth is Expensive – Eh?

Posted by Marketing

Recently a customer brought it to our attention that unlimited bandwidth pricing in Canada is up to 90 times more expensive than other countries.

“Despite Canadians ranking 33rd in broadband Internet speeds worldwide (speedtest.net), Canadian carriers cry foul; their networks are congested and unable to cope with the sheer volume of data that Canadians are consuming,” says the writer, Chris Stavropoulos.

In Japan, England, and the U.S, carriers provide account options for unlimited bandwidth. In Canada, there may be a standard rate for usage of 300 GB per month, with a per-GB charge for overage – an example of usage-based billing. Some Canadian DSL providers cap their overage fees, others do not. The article states cable internet providers are expected to adopt this same usage-based pricing model sometime this year.

In Africa, bandwidth prices remain high because of the expense of deploying necessary infrastructure (satellite versus Fibre optics), complicated and bureaucratic licensing policies, and profiteering.

For data-heavy operations like EMC SRDF, Celerra/Centera, NetApp SnapMirror, Symantec Volume Replicator, Dell EqualLogic, Veeam Backup & Replication, standard file sharing protocols like File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and many others, usage-based billing would quickly add up.

WAN optimization cuts bandwidth costs and resource consumption with minimal effort. Global users can reduce infrastructure costs and alleviate bandwidth constraints without sacrificing service quality, reliability or performance. For some service providers, savings are in the millions of dollars.

Compression is another way to significantly increase effective data throughput and save on overage costs. Compression ratios depend on the type of data that is being compressed. Production results have demonstrated a range of 2:1 up to 15:1. HyperIP WAN Optimization virtual appliance compresses data blocks (versus TCP packets) and efficiently aggregates data into blocks, before moving over the WAN. This puts more data into the HyperIP accelerated WAN. HyperIP’s block level compression feature is very effective, even at speeds up to OC3 (155 Mbps).

Since HyperIP WAN Optimization virtual appliance increases effective data throughput 3 to 10 times, organizations can get increased performance without increasing their usage of bandwidth. Simply put, it takes less bandwidth to replicate data with HyperIP than without it. Even in Canada.

This entry was posted in HyperIP, and tagged , , , , , , , Bookmark the permalink.