Silver Peak With V6.2 of Virtual Acceleration Open Architecture

Silver Peak Systems Inc. released its Virtual Acceleration Open Architecture 6.2, which adds a deployment wizard and storage-specific reporting to its Velocity Replication Acceleration software products.

It helps storage managers deploy replication acceleration software to meet RPOs when moving data for DR.

VXOA is a data acceleration OS that overcomes network distance, congestion and capacity challenges that limit data mobility over distance. The Silver Peak VRX software combines VXOA technology and storage-based forwarding to make replication acceleration affordable for the storage administrator without any networking expertise required.

With this release the company simplifies the deployment of its replication acceleration software with an installation wizard. It enables storage managers to begin accelerating remote replication and backups from any storage product with six mouse clicks. Once traffic is accelerated, storage managers benefit from a storage-specific data view that quantifies the benefit of using the solution. The graphical view shows how much data is replicated, how fast data is replicated and information to validate an RPO is being met.

“When it comes to disaster preparedness, storage managers are laser focused on one thing – meeting the RPO,” said Everett Dolgner, director of replication product management, Silver Peak. “The challenge, however, arises when the network gets in the way of meeting that objective. Silver Peak makes it easier than ever for the storage manager to accelerate their replication environment by doing all of the networking heavy-lifting behind the scenes. From download, to deployment, to acceleration, Silver Peak provides the fastest and easiest path to meeting your RPO.”

The VRX software products offer the flexibility of running on any common hypervisor. The software improves replication throughput by an average of 20x and enables companies to protect more data in less time with no changes to the existing network infrastructure. Products are available for free 30-day, fully-supported trials on the company’s software marketplace.

“500 MB of daily backups were taking up to 27 hours to complete and full replication was taking 95% of the week to complete,” said Steve Borba, IT administrator, Citizens Business Bank. “We had already seen how VMware VMs could compete with physical servers, so we wanted to see how virtual data acceleration software stacked up against proprietary appliances. Deployed with our Dell Compellent SAN-to-SAN replication, Silver Peak software is now enabling us to replicate up to 2TB of data per day. Silver Peak improved our usable bandwidth by more than 22x.”

“We run NetApp’s SnapMirror SAN-to-SAN replication and at first it worked quite well, but I found the process had to be monitored very closely to make sure each snapshot did not exceed the given timeframe,” said Neil Krempin, technical services manager, Prudential Investment company Australia. “I quickly found that Silver Peak’s software-based solution fit into our VMware virtual structure very well, since it is also built on a virtual platform. Silver Peak would allow us to speed up our WAN link and save us from having to invest in extra hardware.“VXOA

“A round trip time of up to 250 milliseconds between our data centers severely limited our offsite replication performance,” said Samer Awajan, CTO, Aramex International, which uses Silver Peak with Dell EqualLogic to store and replicate data over distance. “I didn’t know what to expect at the beginning, but the results quickly impressed me. Our replication rates improved substantially.”

“As our business grows and demands on the IT department change, it is increasingly essential that we optimize our network in order to improve our DR operations and cope with increasing end user needs,” said Tim Buckley, group IT director, United Drug (UDG Healtcare plc), which uses EMC RecoverPoint as a component for DR. “In order to do this, we need a high-capacity solution that solves network quality and latency issues for a wide range of traffic. Silver Peak has a clear advantage on these fronts, plus they are a highly-flexible solution that takes just minutes to deploy.”

Presentations and Demonstrations at Ipexpo
This week, the company will be demonstrating its VRX software at the 2013 IP Expo, being held on the October 16-17 at Earls Court 2 in London. Silver Peak’s Everett Dolgner will be hosting two presentations on Oct. 17 at IPexpo:

• Big Data in Motion: Collection, protection, and processing big data in the right place at 11:10am and

• Practical IT: How to overcome the problems facing data replication at 2:30pm.