Application Performance Brief: EMC Symmetrix DMX / VMAX SRDF Replication

Test Scenario
Tests were conducted using EMC DMX and VMAX arrays. Symmetrix SRDF replication processes were transferred over a simulated 1Gbps WAN link with 200 ms latency.
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Blue Coat Accelerates and Optimizes Symmetrix DMX / VMAX SRDF Replication
Enterprise IT departments face stiff challenges in managing the vast amounts of critical business data and protecting it against loss. With a growing number of applications writing their data to arrays 24 x 7 with nightly batch reports, protecting data is problematic but critical to maintaining business operations. Enterprise storage best practices dictate that data should be continually replicated to remote sites in order to reduce risk of loss and enabling disaster recovery. EMC Symmetrix arrays are at the heart of many Enterprise data centers providing Terabytes of fast, reliable storage. EMC Symmetrix arrays deliver the performance and scale to meet the storage and service level needs of a wide range of business critical applications. EMC Symmetrix SRDF is proven replication technology that enables Enterprise IT departments to replicate business critical data offsite to remote disaster recovery sites on a continual basis. Distance replication can be fraught with latency, chatty protocols and bandwidth constraints that can lengthen replication times and increase risk of data loss. Blue Coat Systems MACH5 WAN optimization technology provides an end to end solution to accelerate SRDF performance, reduce bandwidth usage, and significantly reduce the time to complete data replication to remote recovery sites.

First Pass, starting condition: No SRDF replication traffic has passed through the Blue Coat appliances. Same data, starting condition: SRDF replication data has already passed through the Blue Coat appliances. (Replication from a primary data center to a Remote DR data center)

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Replication over the WAN

Businesses have fueled their growth with geographic expansion, many on a worldwide basis. Organizations with geographically distributed IT operations need fast replication jobs in order to protect valuable data and minimize downtime for business operations. Wide Area Networks provide the connectivity required for replicating data but because of the latency and chatty protocols associated with most WANs, replication jobs can be impacted thereby increasing risk of data loss and reducing user productivity. Replication jobs can easily grow into hundreds of gigabytes in size and therefore take a tremendous amount of time and bandwidth to complete. Data recovery must be fast and reliable in order to minimize impact on business operations. Significant delays in replicating or recovering data can lead to serious impact on business finances.

Performance Summary
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DMX to DMX SRDF replication time reduced by 70x VMAX to DMX SRDF replication time reduced by 70x

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How Blue Coat Accelerates EMC Symmetrix DMX/VMAX SRDF Replication

Blue Coats WAN optimization technology improves the transfer times and reduces the bandwidth consumed for EMC Symmetrix SRDF replication processes.
Byte Cache technology looks for repeating streams of data at the byte level and replaces them with small tokens so data patterns sent previously are not sent again and simply reproduced at the remote data center for completion of the replication process. Protocol Optimization minimizes the effect of latency, so that the replication of data is not affected by the chattiness of certain protocols over large distances or where bandwidth is heavily subscribed. Standard compression techniques are applied to all file transfers to reduce the size of the data being transmitted. Industry leading Quality of Service, bandwidth management, and visibility. This ensures that EMC Symmetrix SRDF replication data is transferred with the right priority and sufficient bandwidth and not in competition with unwanted or unproductive traffic.

Performance Results
Using a simulated 1Gbps WAN link with 200ms latency. Data Center to Data Center.
EMC Symmetrix (DMX / DMX) SRDF replication jobs over WAN (Primary Data Center to DR Data Center)
Warm Without MACH5 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000

More than 70 times faster

EMC Symmetrix (DMX / VMAX) SRDF replication jobs over WAN (Primary Data Center to DR Data Center)
Warm Without MACH5 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000

More than 70 times faster

Application Performance Brief: EMC Symmetrix DMX / VMAX SRDF Replication

Blue Coat Benefits Reduce Replication Time

Protocol optimizations, byte caching and compression significantly reduce the time required needed to complete replication of data

About Blue Coat MACH5 Acceleration Technology

Blue Coat MACH5 technology is a patent-pending combination of five separate application management and tuning technologies that provide unrivaled improvements in application performance and bandwidth utilization. Whether at the edge of your network, or right in the heart of it, MACH5 technology provides a powerful toolkit for meeting any application delivery challenge. These technologies include:

Bandwidth Management
Assign priority and network resources based not only on port or device, but on users, applications and content to more accurately reflect your corporate policies on the network. Works by itself, or integrates with your infrastructure QoS to provide application intelligence to the packet switching network.

Reduce Bandwidth Usage

Byte caching and compression significantly reduce the amount of data traffic over the WAN.

Protocol Optimization
Improves the performance of protocols that are inefficient over the WAN through specific enhancements that make them more tolerant to the higher latencies typically found there. Blue Coat has been optimizing network protocols for over a decade, and offers multiple improvements for TCP, CIFS, HTTP, HTTPS, MAPI and most streaming video and IM protocols.

Secure and Easy Deployment

Integrate securely with your IT infrastructure, even offloading user access authentication.

Byte Caching
Cache repetitive traffic found in the byte stream and serve it locally to reduce the amount of traffic that actually uses the WAN at all. Works like a customized compression algorithm for your network traffic, and leads to dramatic bandwidth savings.

Object Caching
Store files, videos and web content locally, providing LAN-like performance for WAN users, without the overhead and risk of traditional wide area file services. For content delivery, no technology does more to reduce latency and bandwidth to improve the end user experience.

QoS and Bandwidth Management

Deploy Blue Coat to intelligently prioritize and bandwidth-shape Microsoft application file and video traffic from non-essential traffic to ensure business operations run smoothly.

Compression
Inline compression can reduce predictable patterns even on the first pass, making it an ideal complement to byte caching technology.

About the Blue Coat ProxyClient

ProxyClientTM builds on Blue Coats secure web gateway and acceleration technologies to extend application delivery to the desktop. Using MACH5 technology, including caching, compression and protocol optimization, ProxyClient accelerates web and office applications for roaming and small branch users. ProxyClient delivers LAN-like user experience and Blue Coat web filtering with a simple and easy footprint for installation, configuration, deployment and ongoing maintenance.

Blue Coat Systems, Inc.

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Copyright 2011 Blue Coat Systems, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this document may be reproduced by any means nor translated to any electronic medium without the written consent of Blue Coat Systems, Inc. Specifications are subject to change without notice. Information contained in this document is believed to be accurate and reliable, however, Blue Coat Systems, Inc. assumes no responsibility for its use. Blue Coat, ProxySG, PacketShaper, CacheFlow, IntelligenceCenter and BlueTouch are registered trademarks of Blue Coat Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and worldwide. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. v.DS-AB-EMC-SYMv1-0811