Case study and analysis of WAN Optimization pre-requirements

Case study and analysis of W AN Optimiz ation pre - r equire ments Bhargav. Balak rishnan C hennai, India bhargav .balakrishna n@gmail.com Abstract: Thi s paper deals with HOW to analyze the requirement s for setting up the WA N Optimizer. The criteria’s that need s to be taken into accou nt , the steps involved in t he analysis of WAN optimization requirement. These entire analyses w ill give a c omplete fram ework for se tting up a WAN optimiz er within an organization and the organization will have a clear record on the analysis made before setting up this WAN Optimizer. I. Introduction In today’s world the WAN Network is conge sted with high traffic which causes a lot of data loss and jitter. In order to bring a solution for this WAN Optimi zer (E.g. Riverbed) was introduced over the WAN Net work, which w ill improve t he performance of the network to a considerable extent. Even then there are many criteria’s that must be fulfill ed to attai n considerable amount of data transaction provided there is a decrease in the % of data los s over the network. Those criteria’s are going t o be analys ed while dis cussing about the case study. Here in this article the main focus will be on how to pr ovide an optim ized networ k in p laces like Banks, S hare Market s, large indus tries tha t can be IT industry , automobile etc, where data loss and jitter are major criteria’s that are taken into account apart from security. Eve ry organizat ion has many application s that are r unning over t he network s o the availabl e bandwidth ge t shared betwe en them but these in turn i f not balanced properly woul d lead to drastic l oss in the business, data transact ions and the perform ance of the applic ations goes dow n. So how to frame this network provided the inves tment made by the orga nization bec omes satisfac tory. I. Criteria’ s involved in WAN Optimization Wheneve r the conce pt of WAN is taken t here are pre requisites that are taken into account like Network Infrastruct ure, Network Desi gn (Head Office wi th other Branches), Cab le used (Cat 5e, 6 within Organiz ation, Fibre Optic C able connecting branche s , core switches ), Model of R outer, Model of Switches (Layer 2 or 3), Capacity of the organization, Application that will work on live environm ent which i ncludes netw ork security like ISA, Forefr ont , Business so lution etc , Servers, D ata Base. How the calculations among them are carried out? i) N etwork Bandwidth Consumed = TB – TC - (1) TB – Total Ba ndwidth provi ded by ISP TC – Total bandwidth u tilized by the organization during peak time a nd weekends/ non working hours ii) % of data loss = Data Loss / Total data transmitted *10 0 - (2) E.g. Data Loss = 5 000K bps Data Transm itted = 2500 Kbps 5000/250 0 * 100 = 20 0% (Ratio be comes 2:1) iii) Ratio be tween % of ba ndwidth co nsumed in internal network: % of ban dwidth consum ed over external network (Th is provide s us the idea on h ow to ma nage the networ k perform ance during pe ak hours base d upon whic h the priotiza tion should be done) – (3) iv) Network Performance = Data transmission over Fi bre optic + Dat a Transmis sion over Cat 6/ 5e Cables - (4) Data Transm ission = To tal data transmitted – Data loss (Calculate this fo r Fibre Optic and Cat 6/5e cables) – (4(i)) % of network performance = Total Data transm ission/ Total ba ndwidth provi ded * 100 v) % of service provide d by IS P = (24*7 – Downtime) / (24*7) * 100 – ( 5) % of Servi ce provide d by ISP: % of overall Out put (Expected along with fault tolerance) vi) Total Cons umption (% ) = ABC*UBC*BW*DBC*UWBC – (6) ABC – Application Bandwidth Consu mption UBC - User Ban dwidth consum ption BW - Bandwidth wastage DBC - Data Transaction Bandwidth Consumption UWBC – Unwante d Bandwidth Consum ption. vii) % of N/W us ed during peak h ours : % of N/W usage in non peak hours / weekend Note: - Calculate all of them on an average to get an approxi mate value on each cri terion. These are some of the crit eria’s that will help Infrastructure team to d esign the network initially and put s ome of the opera tions of an appl ication on live to get an idea on the netwo rk consum ption as a whole. Based upon the overall performance they can configure the WAN Optimizer which will in turn accelerate the performance of the application s which are runni ng live . For E.g. F inacle is now bein g widely used in the Bank ing sectors where it will get merged with Oracle Applications, O racle Database etc. Along with this there ar e ce rtain comm only used applications like Activ e Directory service, Exchange Servers, A nti Virus Serve rs, File Server s, Share Point Ser vers, Web Ser ver , Blackberry servers etc...S o bandwidth co nsumed by the se applica tions should be studied caref ully by the net work management, server management and Application managem ent teams. B ased upon whic h the router , WAN Optimizer sh ould be configur ed to get the best ove rall output by excluding the % of da ta Loss. Once the data loss is reduced t hen the trans mission over th e network becomes much faster thereby Jitter an d data loss can be eliminated to a greater extent and here too it is not 100% as there is always certain amount o f data loss and ji tter along wit h reduction of network performance Fig (1) II. Case Study of Bank (Large Sec tors) Let us co nsider a Ban k with 200 Empl oyees and 3 Branches 1. Head Office (Muscat) – 75 2. Sur Bra nch – 25 3. Sohar - 60 4. Nizwa – 40 So the a bove menti oned applicat ions in the topic criteria’s involved in WAN Optimization wil l be working along with certain other Backup Solution and Data Achieving i.e. V eritas Net Backup and Net Vault. Here the Head Office will mostly have all the servers running the a pplicati ons which are menti oned above. So how the network is going to be main tained optim ized and thereby providing t he b est results a t the end of t he financial year. So the network diagram of this is sho wn below. Accordi ng to the above network dia gram the branche s will depend on the services from the head office. S o here the priot ization of application will come i nto the picture s. Since the c ountries li ke Oman the telephone exchan ge outside Muscat is mostly giving a maximum bandwid th of 128Kbps leased line . I t is because the exchange can suppor t only that amount of ba ndwidth. I n th is case the prioritization will h ave to come for Finacle and Mail Servers as they are main application that is needed for proces sing the data transmissi on with the clients so that by the end of the day the reports ca n be generated with out any issues. The i nternet access permi ssions can be given f or Managerial level as they nee d certain ot her applic ations thro ugh which they nee d to comm unicate with t he head offi ce like Office c ommunicat or, instant m essenger etc . In this way the application usage are balanced so that all the data storages, transactions and up dation of reports are generated properly f or the entire organis ation . This shows how well the network is optimized by using a WAN Optimizer. This is what makes the organization satisfied on their inves tmen t comm only ter med investment on return. To achieve this IT Team should design the n etwork in such a way that the abov e result is obt ained constantly. The design of t he network s hould be done wit h redundancy i.e. MPLS co nnection that provides 24 hours suppo rt from the service pro vider along with Fault tolerance i.e. if one connection is down the other connec tion will take over it. But the investment is high for a Medium and small level sectors. This is also taken into account only because the service provide d is not interrupte d by an unplanne d downtime by the ISP. All the abo ve inform ation com bined together p rovides the solution of How to frame a network, prioritize and execut e the usage the WAN Optimizer . So entire team of IT and Manage r s s hould m ake a work flow chart on How to bri ng the best th roughput by opt imizing the speed of t he applicat ions as this s ection fall s under service t ransition if a ny change in t he applica tion is needed like instead of Finacle if Fin Flex i s li ghter and more s tabilized t hen that can be us ed provided all the parameters are satisfied as per the Banks requirement. By making the final consideration of the rep ort the IT Te am should m ake their design, test (Application in Live), execute . A. D esigning Phase & Te s t During the de sign phase the IT Team will have all the reports that were discussed . Initially the team should st art workin g out on the c ore appli cations which is going to be used wi dely by an or ganization. From tha t onwards all the other com mon applica tion should be taken into acc ou nt, make a statistics gr aph showing t he approxim ate bandwidt h consumpt ion by each application. An example of statistic graph is shown bel ow. In that let’s take the c onsum ption of Share poi nt portal and Finacle which is used comparatively more, so these a pplications should be prioriti zed based up on their im portunacy t o the organiz ation. These appl ications wil l be configured on WAN optimizer so that the performance can be maint ained. Even the ba ckup shoul d be taken care i n WAN Optimization because that also plays r ole in storing and retrieving of Data’s. So these certain applicat ions should be put on a test be fore it is launched on a Live. T he calculat ion of the a bove formul as should be done in test and live th en only the IT team will be to g et a clear pictu re on the bandwidt h consumpt ion. These calculations can be made as case study for the f uture up grada tion and reference . Based upon this only will tell the IT Team on how succe ssfully they have implem ented the infrast ructure for an organizat ion. B. Live En vir onment The organization should always make a periodic test on the pe rformance o f all the a pplication over the network. If there is an y flaw which is identif ied should be immediate ly been analyze d and send the inform ation to the res pective tea m based upon w hich the change advisory boa rd should deci de on an alternate solution e.g. the bandwi dth consum ption is more duri ng the peak ho urs. The reason s hould be placed dur ing the meeting se ssion like 1. The users downloa d unwanted fil es from t he internet 2 .The band width utilized b y certain application is more mainly it will be th e core application 3 . The data storage transmission i. e. from the application to the data base 4.Anti Virus and firew all application like ISA, Forefront security etc… These are some of the c omm on issues that c ome across n ormally so th es e needs to justify prop erly. For justifying these thin gs the team needs to prepare a case study on t hat application then make a list of testin g on all perspectives i.e. for example if is database how the distri bute the data’s over the network i.e. Network load bal ancing so t hat this ca n be avoide d. When these are structured in this way then the WAN Optimizer will play the role of amplifying the perform ance of the a pplication . In order t o get the best thr oughput of the WAN Opt imizer these pre - requisi te need to be sa tisfied. As the perform ance of all the appl ication sho uld be balanced pr operly over the network especially for the data b ase as it will work mostly on clus tering. The test results of all the liv e serv ers should be brought towards the m anagement e very half year basis as a report to show t hem how best i s the infrast ructure s m aintained wi thin the o rganization. C. Execution This will be final ph ases after Live Testing of th e critical applications. Here the repo rts of all the testi ng which were d one in the l ive servers will be verified that the con dition satisfies the usage of WAN optimizer and the respectiv e applications for which thi s needs to be prioriti zed. How is the prioritization calculated? 1. Prioritiza tion in % = Num ber of usage * Approx time duration utilized /total no of employee * 100 In approxi mate time duration tim e duration of peak hours with + or – extra hours. 2. Downtime in % = Total working hours(Application in WAN optimizer) / Total working hou rs *100 Downtim e is unplanne d downtime . Maintenance will be reduced in total working hours itself. 3. Percentage of transactions = Total of transaction done - Total no of lo st transaction / Actual num ber of transac tion * 100 So why above calculation are don e for fixing a WAN Optimizer? What is need of these testing processes? Hardly t he device i s going to cos t some 10 La khs Maximum with installation charges. The ans wer for this e very incl usion of addi tional device ne eds a proper jus tificati on and at the tim e same t he investment should have som e output in the organiz ations overall result. These test ing are done only to ensure that the critical app lications are brought under the umbrel la of WAN Optim izer which is going to handle the performa nce of all the appli cation that is configured under it. A fter th at these te sting should be d one in order to en sure that there is a ny change i n the speed of p rocessing of t he application that they really want to be. This is what is going t o produce the final report to the mana gement staff s that WAN optimization is going the enhance the performance of critical applications of an orga nization by t he way the or ganization ca n expect this result in the next financial year. Fig (2) When the e xcel sheet of the above graph is opened, there is a prioritization o f core applications that is used in Ba nking Secto r. This will be same scenari o for other sec tors too. So when t he WAN Optimize r is tuned i n this way the n the perf ormance of the core application will be much faster expecially the Daily Backup of the entire B anking proce ss should be properly generated nor it will lead to data loss if there is an interr uption in th e network pe rformance as the % of data transfer depend s the type of cable used especially for the backup Fiber optic cables are used. Es pecially countries like India the E OD process will be tedious for them this will be qu ite relievi ng process ra ther they need to monit or on each and every III. Present Scenario Ma ny organiz ations have c ome across thi s WAN Optim ization. But h ow far they a re analyse d and used for t he purpose of the organiza tion? How far the end users are sat isfied wit h the perform ance? Even th ough the netwo rk is optim ized with improvi ng the perform an ce of the application it depends on the networ k they use t hat is wired o r wireless. This also matter a lot in g etting the perform ance of the a pplications. Then the bra nch offices which are in out skirt als o have to be take n into consi deration. All these se ctors need to analyze before t he live test ing. Once thes e network set ups are confirmed then it is a matter of implementation. In present s cenario how fa r these report s are built by the IT team for the purpose of adopting the policies of an or ganization ? Ho w far the organizations adhere to the IT Policies? These are some of the policie s that need to be s et i.e. grou p p olicies, internet restriction s, USB restrictions to get the entire benefit ou t of this WAN op timization usage. These needs to be set and testi ng of entire netwo rk need to be perform ed and accor ding to which the report nee ds to be generated. This w ill then go to the change a dvisory boar d for the reviewa ble and this will get attested sayin g that there is 99% flaws w ith no fault t olerance i n this current net work infrastructure. How to attain th is level of accuracy matter a lot? This is what the IT T eam can’t guarant ee in many big organiz ations. To attain this is not a sim ple task but tim e is needed to pe rform these testing to ensure that the network is optimized and the pe rformance of all applicat ion will be properly shared in the network ens uring that t he % of data loss and jitter i s reduced when c ompared to the record withou t WAN optimizer. IV. P rocess Flow Diagram The proce ss flow of t his impl ementa tion should b e according to the above Step that i.e. designing and test. START INFORMATION & CASE STUDIES (WAN OPTIMIZER) Advantage or Disadvantage Advantage for which application / process Justifiable reason/ ROI (Return on investment Change Advisory Manager Termination Not Justifiable reason/Advantage Downtime/ interruption in work flow/Output Check with IT Managers/ Vendor Clarification/ doubt Approved & making record Clarified Technical Team (Testing n live) Notification (Users) Execution Approved by CAB & Clients Verification n notification Successful Execution Termination Yes Closure (No added advantage on current setup Fig (3) This workflow w ill give an i dea on HOW ORGANIZ ED A N IMPLEME NTATION IS TAKEN . Since the implementation of WAN Optimization is inter r elated with other networking devices, the notification should be generated as an Email or SMS (SMS throug h Blackberry Enterprise server). The clarification needs to clearly documented for future r efere nce if the organizat ion is not bee n benefitted in anyways by the WAN Optimizer. Th is work fl ow involves p roper approva l at each st age by IT Mana ger or CAB Mem ber (Involves SLA Manager, Clients, Business relation ship manager). So this kind of wor kflow will help in the executi ng a task effectively and with proper a uthentication . V. K ey Advantage on Various WAN Optimiz er In today’ s world there are various WAN optim izer and each of them have t heir own feat ures let us some of them like Riverbed, Bluecoat, Juniper a nd Cisco . A. Bluecoat Works on t he protocol C IFS (common I nternet fil e system ) which can sig nificantl y reduce the num ber of round - trips requ ired to satisfy a request, effectively minimizing delays associated with waiting for d ata retrieval while si multan eously reduc ing WAN usage Another m ajor adva ntage of CIFS protocol is CIF S Protoc ol Optimiza tion is possibl e because P roxySG appliances have the ability to ter minate user requests as if they were the server. They can then open a separate connection to the server that they can use to intelligently make requ ests on the client’s behalf. Th e ProxySG appliance, acting as the client, is a ble to take advantage of the CIFS protocol in a wa y that the cl ient cannot. B. Riverbed Riverbed’s award - winning wide - area data services (WDS) solutions s trategically enable IT to centralize and reduce o perational ove rhead and expe nse, while improvi ng end - user satisfaction. Riv erbed’s products have been proven in som e of the most dem anding and compl ex networks i n the world, wit h thousands of custom ers deploying Steelhead WDS solutions. Some Key advantages of Riverbed Steelhead is Speed, Scalability, scalability and Accelerate key enterprise application. Above all there are some major advantage s IT Infra structure co nsolidation , S erverless branch of fice, enhance d data protecti on, enabling t he mobile workforce. There are key streaming processing data, application, transport and management which will improve the performance of key enterprise applications by 30% - 40 % than before i.e. i f the current perform ance is 60% i t will be im proved to 95% by using t he Riverbed Steelhead. C.Cisco WAAS Cisco ha s come up t he WAN Optim izer known a s Wide Area Application Services. This has some major advantage s when com pared to the abo ve two WAN optimi zer in term s of deploym ent and managem ent. WAAS Central Manager is a web - based central managem ent tool that provides sim plified configu ration, pro visioning, m onitoring, fault - managem ent, loggin g and report ing for up t o 2,500 WAEs within a Cisco WAAS topolo gy. Cisco ’s WAAS req uires no modi fications to applications, clients, or servers in order to provide acceleration services Transparency As ment ioned, for many IT organizati ons the first rul e of netwo rking is t hat you shoul d not do a nything that causes the n etwork to bre ak. For exam ple, it should b e possible to implement a WAN optimization solution and not break existing function ality such as security, QoS or r outing. It s hould also be possible to implement a WAN op timization solution and sti ll be able to use the exi sting managem ent and moni toring tools. Gi ven that WA AS does not change the packet headers, it provide s a high degre e of transparency. That tra nsparency ha s an impa ct on TCO as well as the following factor. • Ease of Deployment and Management Becaus e it doe s not modify packet heade rs, Cisco’s WAAS is less likely to bre ak some aspect of IT than are some other solutions. As a result, WAAS is easier to deploy and manage tha n solutions that break somet hing. In addition, WAAS supports auto - discovery whe re by the solution checks to see if a peer acceleration appliance exists in the packet flow between the source and the destination. This functionality makes deploym ent easier by elimi nating the ne ed to have IT Organiz ations impl ement an overlay network. • Int egration While this was not one of the criteria listed in Table 1, it impacts several of the criteria that were mentioned in that ta ble. The point being that given Cisco ’s position in the enterprise networking marketplace, the chances are that the environment in which the WAN optimization solutions will be deployed w ill be a Cisco environment. Cisco is in the best position to ensure that its WAN optimization s olution does not impact this environm ent. • Performance Some of t he comment s that Mierc om made abou t Cisco’s WAAS in clude: • Under favourable conditions (large WAN latency and highly compressible content) the WAAS V4.0 sol ution can provide impressive degrees of acceleration. • The software demonstrated performance parity with these ot her products, a nd t hat in some key metrics provide d superior c ompression, speed and t hroughput. • Unlike s ome of the other products in the m arket, Cisco’s WA AS does not deg rade So each WAN Optimizer manufacturing companies test their device on the aspect of fault tolerance i.e. prevent ing any distu rbance on the current infrastructure setup, in the same way this case studies needs to be carried out the I T team in order t o justify the management that the Why they have selected this WAN optim izer and what is the Key advant age o f th at. This is t he main ai m behind de signing this paper VI. Conclusion Finally concluding this paper on the pre - requirement framewor k for WAN optimizer wi th the aim, that the following test cases ar e prepared with the following calcula tions mentione d above. This will be mapped with the work - flow d iagram. On the whole this will generate a report for setting up the WAN Optimizer efficie ntly for an orga nization. VII. Reference [1] WAN Optimization with Cisco ’s WAAS by Ashton , Metzler and associates, Leverage Techn ology and Talent for success [2] CIFS protocol opti mization by Blue Coat [3] Data Sheet Riverbed Fa mily Product [4] ITIL V3 found ation [5]Infrastructure Management