Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS)
At-A-Glance
Cisco® Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) is a comprehensive WAN
optimization solution that accelerates applications over the WAN, delivers
video to the branch office, and provides local hosting of branch-office IT
services. Cisco WAAS allows IT departments to centralize applications
and storage in the data center while maintaining LAN-like application performance, and provide locally hosted IT services while reducing the overall
branch-office device footprint.
The Cisco WAAS offers these unique advantages:
• Application vendor validated: Lower risks through proven designs
The Cisco WAAS solution provides LAN-like performance for a wide variety of enterprise applications delivered across the WAN. Typical acceleration factors range from 3
to 10X. Some of the most popular applications such as file sharing and software distribution can be accelerated by up to 100 times.
Cisco WAAS Application Acceleration
Acceleration Factor (Times)
100
Microsoft Exchange
• Offers integrated Windows Server 2008 core hosting Active Directory, Domain
Name System (DNS), Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP), and print services for
better local availability and lower costs
Lowest Total Cost of Ownership
• Reduces risk of integration and operations through application-specific acceleration and hosted services validated by application vendors
• Simplifies operations through proven network integration preserving existing
network services
Return on Investment with Cisco WAAS
IBM Lotus Notes
By centralizing branch-office infrastructure—servers, storage, and backup —companies can save on hardware, software, IT, and storage management costs and improve
productivity. These benefits, together with improved application delivery, result in
increased productivity and employee satisfaction. The net savings over a 3-year period
can be significant, with the investment payback typically less than 6 months.
Microsoft SharePoint
EMC SRDF/A
NetApp SnapMirror
Internet & Intranet (HTTP/HTTPS/WebDAV)
Software Distribution (SMS & Altiris)
Over a typical 3-year refresh cycle, savings per location could include the following:
Database (SQL-Oracle-Notes)
Any TCP Applications
Branch-Office IT Cost Control
• Enables centralization of branch-office server and storage into data centers
• Ensures secure WAN acceleration through Common Criteria Validation Scheme
(CCEVS) or ISO 15408 and Payment Card Industry (PCI) 1.1 compliance
File Sharing (Windows and Unix)
Citrix
• Enables wide-scale delivery of live video by eliminating bandwidth upgrades and
complex configuration
Branch-Office Services Agility
• Delivers branch services rapidly while reducing the device footprint
LAN-like Application Performance
10
• Increases application reach to users in branch offices and mobile environments
• Simplifies remote data protection for compliance and business continuity
• Ownership cost minimized: Reduce device footprints and complexity
1
Application Acceleration and Efficient Video Delivery
• Enables LAN-like performance for centralized applications across the WAN
• Reduces branch-office operational, capital, and bandwidth costs
• Network integrated: Ease network operations and management
Figure 1
IT Benefits of Cisco WAAS
Minimum Acceleration
• Reduced bandwidth consumption, potentially mitigating costly WAN upgrades
Typical Acceleration
Maximum Acceleration
• Significantly improved remote employee productivity
• Reduced cost of ownership through centralization or elimination of branch servers
for file, mail, application, software distribution, print, and video
• Reduced cost of ownership through centralization or elimination of islands of
storage equipments
Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS)
At-A-Glance
Broad Optimization and Transparent Integration
Cisco WAAS Deployment
Cisco WAAS application acceleration and WAN optimization techniques include:
The Cisco WAAS solution can be deployed in three flexible options:
Application Acceleration: Latency and Bandwidth Reduction
• Advanced protocol optimizations such as read-ahead, prediction, suppression, and
sophisticated caching techniques mitigate application latency
• Application-specific acceleration including Common Internet File System (CIFS),
Common Internet File System (MAPI), Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), HTTP, print, and
Network File System (NFS).
WAN Optimization: Bandwidth and Throughput Improvement
• DRE coupled with compression improves efficiency and mitigates unnecessary
bandwidth consumption, improving performance.
• TCP flow optimization (TFO) optimizes TCP to enable better performance and efficiency in WAN environments.
• Acceleration for branch-office users only: Cisco Wide Area Application Engine
(WAE) devices in branch offices and data center
• Acceleration for mobile users only: Cisco WAAS Mobile client software and
server software
• Acceleration for both mobile and branch-office users: Cisco WAE and Cisco
WAAS Mobile
Figure 3
Cisco WAAS Deployment Options
Large Campus
or Data Center
WAAS
Branch Office
WAN
Transparent Integration with Existing Infrastructure
• Dynamic autodiscovery of endpoints helps ensure efficient deployment without the
need to create and manage overlay networks.
WAAS
WAAS
• End-to-end visibility and compatibility with NetQoS facilitates application response
time monitoring and other functions such as QoS, firewall security, and Cisco
NetFlow monitoring.
• Use of existing router QoS enables more granular and higher-quality VoIP.
er
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Network Transparency
Compliance
Pre
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Policing
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Cisco IOS
Monitoring
and
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Visibility
Goals
Cisco WAAS
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Opt
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Services
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ate
ea
Ar
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id
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Caching
TCP Flow
Optimization
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Data
Redundancy
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NetFlow
Domestic
Mobile User
WAAS Mobile SW
over VPN
Cisco Application Networking Services
C
Session-based
Compression
Performance
WAAS
Mobile
Server
on Acceleratio
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A pp
Applications
Internet
International
Mobile User
Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) Framework Diagram
Ap
pl
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at
io
Figure 2
Regional Office
WAAS
Mobile
Server
Cisco WAAS is part of the Cisco Application Networking Services (ANS) portfolio, the
industry’s most comprehensive range of application-aware network-based services to
make enterprise application deployment optimized, reliable, and secure.
The Cisco ANS family includes technologies such as server load balancing, application
security, SSL acceleration, and WAN optimization to enhance the full range of deployment scenarios, including branch-office, mobile worker, data center, and back-office
application integration projects, all using a common foundation and enterprise quality.
For More Information
For more information about Cisco WAAS, visit: http://www.cisco.com/go/waas.
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