Silver Peak Velocity ($15,995/Year) Enables 20x Faster Replication

Silver Peak Systems, Inc. announced Velocity, a combination of products, pricing and packaging that allows storage administrators to accelerate their offsite replication workloads.

Velocity is available for NetApp SnapMirror deployments to provide on-average 20x faster offsite replication, and will be available for replication solutions from Dell Inc., EMC Corp., Hitachi Data Systems, and others in the coming months.

To protect data and meet RPOs, storage administrators must continually replicate data. When these replication workloads extend beyond the data centre to remote DR sites over WANs, administrators must contend with the adverse effects of latency, congestion, and limited network capacity – all of which can impair replication performance and compromise RPOs.

Velocity leverages Silver Peak’s Virtual Acceleration Open Architecture (VXOA) software and simple storage forwarding to make replication acceleration easy and affordable for the storage administrator. The result is reduced ongoing DR costs by avoiding infrastructure upgrades, and helping companies of all sizes minimise risk by replicating more data in less time.

"Silver Peak is the recognised leader in data centre class WAN optimisation and has long been the solution-of-choice for storage replication in large enterprises via our strong partnerships with the top storage companies," said Larry Cormier, SVP of worldwide marketing for Silver Peak. "Silver Peak Velocity expands that leadership to the mid-size enterprise with unprecedented affordability and simplicity. On the product side, we’ve accelerated the time-to-value for storage admins with a simplified deployment capability, and created a special bundle of Silver Peak software that is downloadable directly via the web and priced at 50% less than comparable solutions."

Velocity features downloadable software and a special subscription-based price that provides on-average 20x faster replication performance over existing network infrastructures. Deployment takes less than 20 minutes and can be done completely from the storage administrator’s domain-no network configuration changes are required. Administrators simply download and install the software in the data centre and DR sites, point the storage filers to Silver Peak, and in minutes start accelerating replication traffic without changing the network or interrupting current replication.

"Adverse network conditions can cause storage administrators to miss recovery point objectives, but the storage admins we work with don’t always have control over the network," said Trevis Edgeworth, network practice manager for Lumenate, a technical consulting firm focused on enterprise virtualisation and storage enablement. "Silver Peak Velocity is exceptionally easy, and once the software is downloaded, it only takes minutes to begin accelerating replication traffic over any distance. Silver Peak Velocity is a logical choice for anyone doing asynchronous replication over distance and is an insurance policy for storage admins."

"As our business continues to grow, so do our data and application usage requirements across the network, making it more difficult to meet RPO/RTO goals with the same WAN infrastructure," said Aaron Gerraughty, VP, MIS for Waxie Sanitary Supply. "Silver Peak was a great solution for us, providing instant integration with our NetApp SnapMirror implementation and helping us to avoid increased bandwidth charges."

"While expanding WAN bandwidth is a common impulse for improving recovery point objectives, bandwidth alone may not address the issue because of inefficient protocols, poor network quality and latency," said John Morency, VP of DR and IT resiliency research at Gartner. "WAN optimisation controllers (WOCs) can reduce the bandwidth on the WAN and mitigate the issues of latency and packet loss that are associated with replicating data over longer distances. Because they are software-based, Virtual WOCs can facilitate greater flexibility in optimisation deployments, either within the data centre or at a remote branch site."

Availability and Pricing
Velocity is available for NetApp SnapMirror storage deployments. It will be available for Dell, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, and other mid-range replication products before the end of 2012. Pricing is $15,995 for a one-year subscription, which includes two Silver Peak VXOA software licenses and support. Additional specially-priced bundles for Dell EqualLogic replication are available exclusively through Dell and its authorized resellers. All of Silver Peak’s software-based WAN optimisation products are available as free trials from the Silver Peak Virtual Marketplace.