HP StorageWorks Enterprise File Services WAN Accelerator Deployment Guide (November 2005)

HP EFS WAN ACCELERATOR DEPLOYMENT GUIDE 13
1 - DESIGNING AN HP EFS
WAN A
CCELERATOR
CHAPTER 1 Designing an HP EFS WAN
Accelerator Deployment
In This Chapter This chapter describes how the HP EFS WAN Accelerator works and how to
design an HP EFS WAN Accelerator deployment. This chapter includes the
following sections:
 “Introduction to the HP EFS WAN Accelerator” next
 “Design and Deployment Overview” on page 15
 “Definition of Terms” on page 17
 “Bypass Mode” on page 18
 “Failover Mode” on page 19
Introduction to the HP EFS WAN Accelerator
The causes for slow throughput in Wide Area Networks (WANs) are well
known: high delay (round-trip time or latency), limited bandwidth, and chatty
application protocols. Virtually all large enterprises spend a significant
portion of their information technology budgets on storage and networks,
much of it spent to compensate for slow throughput by deploying redundant
servers and storage, and the required backup equipment. HP EFS WAN
Accelerators enable you to consolidate and centralize key IT resources to save
money, reduce capital expenditures, simplify key business processes, and
improve productivity.
The HP EFS WAN Accelerator not only addresses the bandwidth problem and
application protocol chattiness but the latency problem as well. The HP EFS
WAN Accelerator uses Transaction Acceleration (TA) to optimize throughput
and save bandwidth on WANs.
HP EFS WAN Accelerators intercept client-server connections without
interfering with normal client-server interactions, file semantics, or protocols.
All client requests are passed through to the server normally, while relevant
traffic is optimized to improve performance. HP EFS WAN Accelerators can
be easily introduced into an enterprise environment without requiring any
significant changes to the network or architecture.