Riverbed Unveils IT Performance Solution for Accelerating VMware vSphere Replication

At VMworld 2011, Riverbed Technology announced its Steelhead appliance wide area network (WAN) optimization solutions accelerate VMware vSphere Replication, a new feature of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5. The combination of the Riverbed and VMware solutions address the challenges of replicating data across the WAN in cloud and virtualized environments, and is an integral component to improving business continuity and disaster recovery. This joint collaboration between Riverbed and VMware enables organizations to build public, private and hybrid clouds for connecting global enterprises.

VMware vSphere Replication is a new feature of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 that allows virtual machines (VMs) and their associated data to be replicated within or between local, remote or cloud-based data centers. When replicating data across the WAN, challenges may arise due to bandwidth constraints, high latency in the network and packet loss — all of which results in unsatisfactory performance that ultimately leads to replication not completed within an allotted timeframe. The Riverbed and VMware joint solution enables companies to realize the benefits of extended distance data replication in a cost-effective approach without compromising recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) goals. The Riverbed WAN optimization solutions deliver significant performance gains when replicating large amounts of data across the WAN, while dramatically reducing the recurring costs associated with WAN infrastructure.

“VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager complements VMware vSphere Replication, and provides the simplest and most reliable disaster protection and site migration for all applications traveling over the WAN,” said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. “This joint solution with Riverbed optimizes the WAN traffic, and enables VMware vSphere Replication deployments to perform at near-LAN speeds across long distances, improving business continuity and disaster recovery.”

As part of the joint solution, Steelhead appliances overcome the challenges of replicating data across the WAN, which include bandwidth constraints, high latency and packet loss. An extensive test conducted by Riverbed and VMware resulted in significant performance benefits for VMware vSphere Replication deployed in a Riverbed optimized WAN environment. The testing scenario of VMware vSphere Replication with and without the Steelhead appliance, in a variety of real-world WAN network conditions, showed an improvement of greater than 5X<1> in end-to-end data replication performance and bandwidth reduction.