Availability of FlowTune From Infineta

Infineta Systems, Inc., provider of WAN optimization solutions for big traffic workflows, announced the availability of FlowTune, a QoS) feature-set that delivers the fine-tuned performance guarantees needed for critical application functions such as high-speed replication and backup.

A key enhancement to the set of acceleration features available on Infineta’s Data Mobility Switch (DMS), FlowTune prevents network congestion caused by competing application flows by transparently and dynamically managing application transmission rates. This approach to application performance assurance contrasts with those of traditional solutions that rely on packet drops to recover from congestion events, and therefore impact performance for critical applications such as high-speed replication and backup.

FlowTune enables enterprises to meet their RPO and RTO goals while utilizing the WAN at full capacity, running multiple applications over the WAN, and making use of WAN alternatives (e.g. MPLS) for overall OpEx reduction.

"Disaster recovery and data protection solutions that leverage high-speed replication are top requirements for enterprise IT departments today," said Dave Bartoletti, senior analyst at Forrester Research. "Bandwidth costs are rising and the growth in stored data continues unabated. Companies facing bandwidth constraints must be able to tune their networks to prevent congestion and deliver adequate QoS for replication traffic."

Until now, enterprises have guaranteed RPOs/RTOs for replication and backup traffic by provisioning expensive point-to-point links to keep packet losses in check, dedicating the WAN to a given traffic type such as replication, or by setting aside a large portion of the WAN as an unused buffer between competing traffic types. Enterprises were forced to take these expensive measures to protect their applications from the adverse impact of packet losses in the network.

"For far too long, enterprises have been forced to either cut corners on business goals such as RPOs/RTOs, or divert a large portion of the IT budget to expensive WAN bandwidth in the form of point-to-point circuits," said Haseeb Budhani, chief product officer for Infineta.

"With data growth driving massive replication and backup needs for all enterprises, there needs to be a way to mitigate the WAN bottleneck," he said. "FlowTune makes it possible for enterprises to prevent network congestion instead of forcing them to react to it, resulting in dramatically improved application performance."

Typically a result of queue overruns, packet losses directly impact application performance and have long been considered an impediment that could not be resolved. Layer-2 QoS techniques such as RED and WRED work quite well to protect network resources from traffic overruns, but tend to adversely impact performance for applications such as high-speed replication and backup.

In conjunction with Infineta’s Velocity Transport Engine (VTE), the scalable, transparent TCP optimization solution, FlowTune protects applications from the impact of packet losses, and ensures zero queue overruns due to competing flows. It maintains visibility of all accelerated flows in the network, managing transmission windows for each application, preventing congestion from occurring on downstream switches and routers.

Consider an enterprise with a point-to-point circuit between data centers that chooses to utilize no more than 80% of the WAN at any given time. The enterprise drives replication traffic over the WAN during business hours, and drives backup jobs during off-business hours so as to not impede critical replication traffic in any way. As a result, 20% of the link is left unused at all times for fear that using any additional bandwidth may lead to packet drops due to momentary queue overruns.

With Infineta’s solution in use
to accelerate traffic between data centers,
this enterprise can:

• Fully utilize its WAN link (99%+) instead of forcing IT to work with an arbitrary throughput cap of 80% of the link’s capabilities.
• Granularly partition their inter-data center WAN links for use by replication and backup simultaneously. As an example, replication can be allocated at 80% of the link with a higher priority, while backup can be allocated a minimum of 20%, a portion that can automatically increase in size if the replication processes are idling during off-business hours.
• Significantly reduce OpEx by utilizing a cost-effective, shared WAN such as an MPLS VPNs for inter-data center connectivity instead of the expensive point-to-point circuit.

Infineta Systems is a networking company that develops and markets WAN optimization systems that accelerate inter-data center WANs running at up to 10GBps wire speeds. DMS is a WAN optimization system that leverages merchant-silicon to deliver a distributed, high-performance platform with port-to-port latencies averaging 50 microseconds.