Integrated Branch infrastructure saves enterprise maintenance costs

To save money and optimize operations, enterprises are integrating their branch infrastructure into the data center. However, the Branch users still want applications and services to run as locally. In the integration of Branch infrastructure, the responsibility for achieving this "local" performance falls into the network administrator.

Recently, Riverbed Technology released a new edge-server infrastructure (edge-VSI) that allows enterprises to remove the remaining servers and storage devices from their branches and integrate them into data centers.

Branch office infrastructure integration: edge-VSI and Riverbed Granite

Edge-VSI is supported by the new Riverbed Granite device, a product with both hardware and software. It can separate branch Edge servers from storage, it enables enterprises to deliver low-latency and high-reliability applications and data to branch users, and its performance is close to that of local deployment. Granite consists of Riverbed Granite Core physical or virtual data center devices) and software running on the Riverbed new Steelhead EXWAN optimization device in the Riverbed Granite Edge branch.

By converting the communication between the server and the storage from a continuous transaction to a parallel transaction, Riverbed Granite optimizes the storage traffic between the data center and the branch. This improves the server's efficiency in obtaining storage data and enables the server to be deployed farther away from storage resources. Therefore, the network administrator can deploy applications on the SteelheadEX device as virtual servers without adding branch hardware.

Branch office infrastructure integration: early customers of Riverbed Granite

Although enterprises want to purchase a complete Branch infrastructure integration solution, many enterprises still leave some servers in their branches for performance considerations. However, products such as Riverbed Granite can avoid this situation, which can remove all servers, thus saving a lot of maintenance costs.

Geo Engineers is an Information Technology Manager at geoscience and technology consulting. weinberger pointed out that their company has deployed Riverbed Steelhead products in nine office locations throughout the United States. He has been testing Granite for the past three years. He has deployed Granite in one office and is preparing to replace local file servers of each branch with the new edge-VSI architecture. "For us, the advantage is that data on all file servers is transferred to Granite, so all data can be managed in the data center," he said ."

Paul Hastings LLP is an international legal company that has established data centers in 19 cities around the world. According to Searl Tate, the company's network engineering Director, they are trying to reduce data centers and integrate data into fewer core data centers.

Tate points out that he plans to retain four major data centers-in New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Paris-and replace other data centers with virtual storage infrastructure and Riverbed Granite products. Transferring data back to the core data center will greatly improve the efficiency of the company. "This is a good thing-we really want to reduce the number of data centers from 19 to 4 to optimize the company's operations," he said. The final idea is to compress and reduce the devices at both ends so that users do not need to transmit large amounts of data over the WAN. Now, enterprises must extend the WAN optimization concept to their remote locations ."

Branch office infrastructure integration: Saving enterprises money

The company announced that deploying Riverbed Granite can save enterprises and organizations up to 50% of their spending compared to other approaches to managing distributed infrastructure.

Weinberger said he hopes to reduce local data backup costs and local server maintenance costs of the Branch to reduce costs. Removing all local hardware will also free his team to focus on other projects without wasting effort on managing remote resources.

Because most IT employees are located at the Seattle headquarters of Geo Engineers, Weinberger often needs to send employees to remote locations to repair the branch servers. "If we run virtual machines on the Steelhead, the demand for on-site IT maintenance will certainly be significantly reduced," he said ."