New Cisco WAAS Data Center Replication Mode

Expanding its Data Center 3.0 solution set, Cisco announced application delivery network capabilities for disaster recovery, security and regulatory compliance that accelerate data center traffic replication over wide-area networks. The company also detailed Data Center 3.0-related activities scheduled for Storage Networking World in Dallas, Oct. 13-16. Comprising the broadest set of data center networking solutions in the industry, the Cisco Data Center 3.0 architecture provides a framework for reliable, highly secure, responsive and green data centers.

Cisco WAAS (Wide-Area Application Services) helps reduce bandwidth requirements, data replication times, time to recovery, and data loss, while increasing acceptable distance between data centers and aiding regulatory compliance. A new version of Cisco WAAS software now offers a Replication Accelerator mode that optimizes data center replication capabilities for popular storage applications. The added capabilities will help information technology (IT) managers overcome wide-area network bandwidth limitations when remotely replicating data over Internet Protocol (IP) networks between data centers, improving disaster recovery and business continuance. The Cisco WAAS Replication Accelerator mode has been tested and validated for use with EMC SRDF and NetApp SnapMirror applications, and is supported on the Cisco Wide Area Application Engine WAE-7341 and WAE-7371 appliances.

WAAS Replication Accelerator provides data encryption for data at rest and future support for data in motion, as well as protecting data by providing more assured data backups. In addition, recently announced 8-Gbps Fibre Channel modules, as well Cisco TrustSec Fibre Channel (CTS-FC) and Storage Media Encryption (SME), provide data-protection capabilities for Cisco’s family of storage area network (SAN) solutions. Together, these technologies extend data protection across the Cisco Data Center 3.0 portfolio. Cisco’s data center technology innovations contributed to Cisco’s being honored recently with the SearchStorage New Technology Award for the Cisco NX-OS SAN operating system, WAAS, and the Cisco Nexus 1000V distributed virtual software switch.

Michael Baker Corp., based in Moon Township, Pa, provides professional services for engineering, operations, and maintenance services worldwide. The company has deployed Cisco WAAS and SAN technology, including Cisco MDS 9200 Series Multilayer Fabric Switches, for multiple data centers. Michael Baker selected Cisco Data Center solutions to centralize IT operations for better utilization, with the goal of reducing costs and enabling the enterprise to use offices and employees more effectively.

Michael Baker estimates that since the upgrade to WAAS, the company has been able to reduce costs through more efficient collaboration, estimating savings of over $1 million on one project and more than 260 percent ROI over 18 months. The Cisco SAN technology enables the company to link its data centers, provides expandability options for VMware hosts, and allows expandable disaster-recovery capabilities for data replication and business continuity.

"The new Cisco WAAS Replication Accelerator mode will allow us to transfer more data between data centers in a shorter period of time, maximizing the use of WAN connections and eliminating the transfer of redundant data across the link for greater business continuity," said Jeremy Gill, vice president of information technology for Michael Baker. "Cisco WAAS is complementary with the Cisco MDS portfolio, taking FCIP-based replication traffic from the MDS and optimizing the traffic to reduce backup time, typically from more than eight hours to less than one hour. The end-to-end Cisco 3.0 data center solution also provides greater manageability and ease of use for the IT staff."