Three Approaches to WAN Optimization Optimization is now the norm—so what’s next for WAN management? Experts say app delivery optimization, WAN aggregation, and an all-in-one approach that couples WAN optimization with management and security EDITOR’S NOTE WHAT’S NEXT IN APPLICATION DELIVERY OPTIMIZATION? WHAT ABOUT WAN AGGREGATION? CONSIDER UNIFYING OPTIMIZATION, MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY EDITOR’S NOTE HOME EDITOR’S NOTE WHAT’S NEXT IN APPLICATION DELIVERY OPTIMIZATION? WHAT ABOUT WAN AGGREGATION? CONSIDER UNIFYING OPTIMIZATION, MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY From WAN to Web: A Network Story Any network large enough to have a branch office needs to deliver corporate applications—and fast For networks today, adding application delivery optimization (ADO) as an afterthought is no longer adequate IT architects must plan for ADO at the get-go, but the WAN isn’t what it used to be Corporate apps like Salesforce compel organizations to add Internet links directly to branch offices, and even allow some branches to use Internet links exclusively to connect to data centers But this opens enterprises up to the creepy criminals of the Web and can cause applications to crawl The costs saved by switching from dedicated MPLS lines to broadband are invariably outweighed by threats to security and performance Enter software-defined networking Chapter of this Technical Guide covers the latest in optimization technology, including SDN They promise the ability to provision THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION network resources on the fly, meaning that network congestion may no longer be an issue Not ready for SDN? How about WAN aggregation? This technology makes better use of your multiple network connections by treating them as one solid pipe—feeding bandwidthhungry applications the resources they need John Burke evaluates WAN aggregation technology and offers purchasing pointers in Chapter of this guide If you can’t muster enough courage to brave either SDN or WAN aggregators in your new Web world, consider WAN optimization products that combine management and security, the subject of Chapter With baked-in security, monitoring and management, though, an organization has a fighting chance against the wiles of the Web n Tessa Parmenter Site Editor, SearchEnterpriseWAN OPTIMIZING What’s Next in Application Delivery Optimization? HOME EDITOR’S NOTE WHAT’S NEXT IN APPLICATION DELIVERY OPTIMIZATION? WHAT ABOUT WAN AGGREGATION? CONSIDER UNIFYING OPTIMIZATION, MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY The linchpins of application delivery optimization (ADO) are now commonplace: Most WANs now include optimization, and most data centers have an application delivery controller (ADC) to load balance among servers and perform other services including various kinds of offload In the continuous quest to make the wide-area network better at providing the services users need, IT needs to be focusing attention next on WAN aggregation and on software-defined networking (SDN) Aggregation allows inexpensive Internet bandwidth and diverse last-mile WAN feeds to make connectivity continuous and high performing; SDN brings new levels of control, security and visibility to the WAN ADO MAINSTREAM Nemertes Research’s annual benchmark of enterprise IT has mapped the steady progress THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION of WAN optimization from when it was a rarity back in 2005 to today, when more than 62% of companies have it or plan to deploy it in 2014—that’s pretty much all the folks out there with a WAN big enough to optimize! Likewise, the use of load balancers and ADCs is becoming even more widespread as virtualized versions and ADC as a service (ADCaaS) options from major providers gain popularity STILL ROOM TO IMPROVE Of course, the backdrop for optimization continues to shift as well, and so trends in branching behavior, in connectivity and in networking technology are driving new ADO needs and technology Nemertes Research has tracked a drive towards agile branching in the enterprise— that is, a strategy of making branches smaller and less permanent, more attuned to market OPTIMIZING HOME EDITOR’S NOTE WHAT’S NEXT IN APPLICATION DELIVERY OPTIMIZATION? dynamics IT needs to support this strategy by making branches easier and cheaper and faster to start up and shut down One of the key shifts is the rapid rise of both direct-Internet sites (those that not send all their Internet traffic back through a data center) and Internet-only sites (those without a dedicated WAN link, most of which use a VPN across their link to the Internet to get to their data centers) This shift to Internet is driven by several trends: WHAT ABOUT WAN AGGREGATION? CONSIDER UNIFYING OPTIMIZATION, MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY Increasing use of software as a service (which now comprises 25% of the average application portfolio) ■■ The decrease in prices for Internet services ■■ The cost difference between Internet and dedicated WAN services ■■ The fact that WAN links tend to be much slower to provision ■■ FOLDING IN CHEAP AND CHEERFUL INTERNET ADO has to expand to address the opportunities and challenges created by the rise of Internet links as WAN replacements or supplements Link aggregation is the most important way ADO can take advantage of the Internet ADO appliances and services need to be able to make all the connections feeding a branch look like a single, better, faster and more resilient connection By aggregating multiple Internet links, or combinations of Internet and dedicated WAN connections, ADO devices can compensate for variations in Internet link performance while also making optimal use of cheap, easy and fat Internet pipes to improve application performance and availability THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION ADO + SDN Revolutionary changes are launching in enterprise networking at the same time IT is building the Internet-powered agile branch SDN has moved steadily from being a Web-scale cloudvendor science project to a broadly available feature set SDN applications for the enterprise are appearing, and although only 6% of organizations in Nemertes’ benchmark research have plans for deploying in production by the end of 2015, it’s likely SDN will become a staple of enterprise networking within the next five years OPTIMIZING HOME EDITOR’S NOTE WHAT’S NEXT IN APPLICATION DELIVERY OPTIMIZATION? WHAT ABOUT WAN AGGREGATION? CONSIDER UNIFYING OPTIMIZATION, MANAGEMENT AND While the most obvious use cases for SDN involve changing how IT provisions and manages the data center network (and the data center components within the WAN), SDN will inevitably affect the whole network and, thus, encompass the WAN and ADO Bringing the set of services ADO appliances can provide under general programmatic control will allow SDN controllers to use those capabilities to meet specific performance requirements and objectives with more flexibility Of course, some kinds of ADO services may be delivered as SDN applications via generic data-plane devices, too, lessening the need for specialized appliances for many kinds of function SECURITY WHAT TO DO NOW IT needs to be exploring WAN connectivity options to improve branching agility and branch network reliability, so it needs to be THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION exploring aggregation as a part of its ADO strategy IT should be actively testing link aggregation this year Likewise, IT needs to be looking ahead to SDN as the underlying organizing principle of its network in the long run, and in the medium term expect to deploy it in production—data center, WAN and campus In the short term, IT should be writing SDN-readiness (e.g., OpenFlow support) into requests for proposals and requirements documents for all network purchases It should also be experimenting with applications, controllers and at least virtual (but preferably also physical) network assets Free and open source apps, controllers and virtual equipment can make this low impact and quick to spin up Bringing both SDN and link aggregation to bear will help IT keep optimization in sync with the evolving enterprise network —John Burke AGGREGATING What About WAN Aggregation? HOME EDITOR’S NOTE WHAT’S NEXT IN APPLICATION DELIVERY OPTIMIZATION? WHAT ABOUT WAN AGGREGATION? CONSIDER UNIFYING OPTIMIZATION, MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY In a technological landscape focused on business agility and lowered communications costs, WAN aggregation combines the strengths of cheap, consumer-grade Internet with dedicated WAN connections It even allows some companies to get rid of their dedicated WAN connections entirely, without giving up the reliability and performance they need The enterprise continues to spread to more and smaller branches, and wants to put those branches into places with lower real-estate costs that are closer to staff or to market opportunities This shift often makes traditional wired WAN connections from branch to data center harder to get and more expensive when available Unavailability and expense drive many companies to explore using both consumer-grade Internet and wireless WAN connectivity (like 3G LTE and 4G LTE) for easy-turn-up/easy-turn-down connectivity HOW WAN AGGREGATORS WORK Even when dedicated WAN links are replaced with plain Internet connectivity, the responsibility of optimally running virtual desktop infrastructure, IP telephony and other key services is still up to IT Fortunately, WAN aggregation tools offer IT a way to make those applications run with adequate performance, prioritization and reliability WAN aggregation appliances take multiple connections, whether WAN or Internet, and make them look like a Any enterprise contemplating networking new branches or a refresh on existing connectivity should include the option of WAN aggregation THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION AGGREGATING HOME EDITOR’S NOTE WHAT’S NEXT IN APPLICATION DELIVERY OPTIMIZATION? WHAT ABOUT WAN AGGREGATION? CONSIDER UNIFYING OPTIMIZATION, MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY single link with higher capacity and reliability than the individual links Rather than providing for failover connectivity from one connection to another (a hot-cold strategy), they use all connections all the time (a hot-hot strategy) They are deployed symmetrically, with appliances in the branch talking to one or more appliances in the data center Typically, WAN aggregators will also introduce some logic and intelligence into the mix, allowing network engineers to designate traffic priorities and application performance profiles that are to be delivered For example, they can designate some traffic as critical, to be delivered first as long as packets are flowing, and other traffic as best-effort-only, to be dropped if available capacity drops Some can set throughput floors (the least amount of bandwidth to be dedicated to an app) and ceilings (the maximum amount of bandwidth dedicated to an app) and other kinds of performance targets to handle performance issues like latency These are traditionally functions of WAN optimizers, although aggregators typically not bring the same broad range of traffic optimizations into play; for example, they THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION generally won’t do compression and protocol accelerations When combining a highly reliable WAN link that has higher costs per bit with a less-reliable Internet link that costs less, WAN aggregators leverage the strengths of each They lean on the high-reliability link for critical traffic and use the cheap bandwidth to boost throughput for the overall load When pairing multiple Internet links, assuming they come from different providers (and ideally along different paths), aggregators can optimize delivery based on current transit times through each provider’s network EVALUATING WAN AGGREGATORS When evaluating WAN aggregators, ask your potential vendor these questions: ■■ ■■ What are the number and capacity of the links your WAN aggregator can manage simultaneously? What performance characteristics can your WAN aggregator manage? AGGREGATING ■■ HOME EDITOR’S NOTE WHAT’S NEXT IN APPLICATION DELIVERY OPTIMIZATION? WHAT ABOUT WAN AGGREGATION? ■■ How many classes of traffic can your WAN aggregator juggle, and can it automatically recognize and tag traffic from various applications as belonging to a given group? Does your WAN aggregator add other optimizations to the mix, such as link multiplexing and split routing (sending outbound Internet traffic out across the Internet directly, instead of routing it through the pseudo WAN link back to the data center)? CONSIDER UNIFYING OPTIMIZATION, MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION ■■ ■■ How many branch appliances can talk to a single data center appliance? How is high availability managed in branches and in the data center? Any enterprise contemplating networking new branches or a refresh on existing connectivity should be examining the possibilities of nontraditional links—wireless WAN and Internet—and should include the option of WAN aggregation in their thinking, for some or all branches —John Burke UNIFYING Consider Unifying Optimization, Management and Security HOME EDITOR’S NOTE WHAT’S NEXT IN APPLICATION DELIVERY To reduce corporate footprint and make the most of your network purchases, find hardware or software that does wide area network (WAN) optimization, management and security in one package OPTIMIZATION? WHAT ABOUT WAN AGGREGATION? CONSIDER UNIFYING OPTIMIZATION, MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY WAN SECURITY AND OPTIMIZATION The enterprise, small or large, swims in a sea of constantly evolving predators and parasites There are criminals looking to break in and steal, blackmail or otherwise extract money from you, as well as pests looking to slip in unsolicited ads, malware, scareware and spyware The nature of the compromises have also evolved: The biggest cyberattacks right now are adaptive and persistent; low and slow; and multimode and targeted At the same time, company environments of all sizes continue to evolve to support a THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION growing mobile population and a new network of suppliers, partners and customers Staff and contractors bring computers, smartphones and tablets into and out of company LANs, and reach in to work from anywhere Partners and suppliers develop webs of interoperating systems requiring deeper reach into the data center to support an evolving collaborative and just-in-time ecosystem Faced with all these challenges, traditional address-port-protocol firewalls are overmatched They are certainly still necessary, but they cannot be flexible, subtle or agile enough to sufficiently protect enterprise data IT staff needs to figure out how to secure the increasingly porous and negotiable boundary between what’s “inside” and “outside” the corporate network Meanwhile, companies are changing what’s going on inside the corporate LAN and WAN by eliciting one or all of the following: UNIFYING ■■ ■■ HOME EDITOR’S NOTE WHAT’S NEXT IN Spreading their operations to more locations, but continuing to keep internal applications centralized in data centers; Deploying more applications that are latencysensitive (such as VDI sessions, which 52% of companies now use, and Voice over IP, which 95% of companies now use for at least some sites and staff); and APPLICATION DELIVERY OPTIMIZATION? WHAT ABOUT WAN AGGREGATION? ■■ Adopting more software as a service technology (more than 70% of companies use at least one) CONSIDER UNIFYING OPTIMIZATION, MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY In the branch—which nowadays is likely smaller than a few years ago and devoid of on-site tech support—users are completely reliant on remotely provided solutions and remote support Less than a third of companies increased IT staff in 2013, and only 7% increased IT staff in remote locations of WAN optimization options that can compress, prioritize and accelerate network traffic And whatever technology IT finds to mitigate latency, it needs the technology to have low capital cost to optimize every branch office and be manageable from the network operations center (NOC) because IT staffs continue to be in short supply IT can’t properly optimize or secure what it cannot see and understand They need tools that can help manage the network itself to provide an accurate, detailed and real-time picture of what is actually happening on the network So, they need solutions that can show network utilization and performance (including loss, latency and jitter), track traffic flows and applications in use, and show which users and devices are present and active The ideal approach combines the following optimization, management and security functions: ■■ WAN OPTIMIZATION MANAGEMENT Consequently, in addition to needing a new security strategy, many find themselves in need 10 THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION ■■ Full visibility of packets, flows and entities on the network; Next-generation firewall capabilities, data UNIFYING loss prevention, and intrusion detection and prevention; and ■■ HOME EDITOR’S NOTE WHAT’S NEXT IN APPLICATION DELIVERY OPTIMIZATION? WHAT ABOUT WAN AGGREGATION? CONSIDER UNIFYING Compression, acceleration, traffic shaping and latency mitigation Under policy-driven central management— through the NOC or a cloud service—and from a single appliance in each location, the ideal approach would provide essential operational visibility, protect the branch from threats crossing WAN or Internet links, and make sanctioned applications perform more LAN-like Where performance allows, a virtual OPTIMIZATION, MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY 11 THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION appliance option that can be run on existing in-branch hardware (such as a router with a hosting card or a print server with little to do) can further reduce the capital cost and deployment time to a new branch This approach could even be provided as a service by a WAN/ISP, in-line, and thus require no on-premises equipment at all, providing the ultimate in footprint reduction However delivered, providing WAN optimization, management and security with a single solution offers a chance of minimizing cost, complexity and risk while maximizing performance and understanding —Henry Svendblad ABOUT THE AUTHORS JOHN BURKE is principal research analyst with Nemertes HOME EDITOR’S NOTE WHAT’S NEXT IN APPLICATION DELIVERY OPTIMIZATION? WHAT ABOUT WAN AGGREGATION? CONSIDER UNIFYING OPTIMIZATION, MANAGEMENT AND Research With nearly two decades of technology experience, he has worked at all levels of IT, including end-user support specialist, programmer, system administrator, database specialist, network administrator, network architect and systems architect He has worked at Johns Hopkins University, the College of St Catherine and the University of St Thomas HENRY SVENDBLAD is senior vice president for technology at Digital Air Strike with over fifteen years of IT management experience in a number of markets Prior to this, he was principal research analyst at Nemertes Research, where he conducted primary benchmark and custom research and wrote thought-leadership reports and delivered strategic seminars SECURITY Three Approaches to WAN Optimization is a SearchEnterpriseWAN.com e-publication Kate Gerwig | Editorial Director Rivka Gewirtz Little | Executive Editor Kara Gattine | Executive Managing Editor Jessica Scarpati | Features and E-zine Editor Brenda L Horrigan | Associate Managing Editor Linda Koury | Director of Online Design Neva Maniscalco | Graphic Designer Doug Olender | Senior Vice President/Publisher dolender@techtarget.com TechTarget 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466 www.techtarget.com © 2014 TechTarget Inc No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher TechTarget reprints are available through The YGS Group About TechTarget: TechTarget publishes media for information technology professionals More than 100 focused websites enable quick access to a deep store of news, advice and analysis about the technologies, products and processes crucial to your job Our live and virtual events give you direct access to independent expert commentary and advice At IT Knowledge Exchange, our social community, you can get advice and share solutions with peers and experts COVER ART: THINKSTOCK 12 THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION ... Three Approaches to WAN Optimization is a SearchEnterpriseWAN.com e-publication Kate Gerwig | Editorial Director Rivka Gewirtz Little | Executive Editor Kara Gattine | Executive Managing Editor... all sizes continue to evolve to support a THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION growing mobile population and a new network of suppliers, partners and customers Staff and contractors bring computers,... the steady progress THREE APPROACHES TO WAN OPTIMIZATION of WAN optimization from when it was a rarity back in 2005 to today, when more than 62% of companies have it or plan to deploy it in 2014—that’s