Server Consolidation

Meet the challenges of server consolidation. Handle the impact of branch office action as it suddenly moves across the entire WAN.

The Challenge: Capitalize on Consolidation

Consolidating file access from remote sites to centralized data centers can make good business sense. Yet accurate understanding of the impact is critical to achieving the desired ROI. Assessment, monitoring and control of network environment are a must before any cost, maintenance and regulatory benefits can be realized.

To determine whether server consolidation projects are wise, you'll want to be armed with information to make an intelligent choice. Too often, servers are pulled out of the branch and users complain bitterly that accessing files over the WAN is much too painful. Previous access over a high speed LAN is now going over the WAN, where file access competes with everything else in the network.

CIFS and the WAN

File access protocols, including Microsoft® CIFS, are not optimized for the WAN. A very chatty protocol, CIFS requires many round trips in order to complete operations—creating performance issues when that happens over the WAN.

Bigger WAN Impact

With consolidation, suddenly there's greater network congestion and much larger bandwidth requirements. Consider what happens when servers are removed from the branch: Not only is every file access now traversing the WAN, but every print job, DNS and DHCP request must now cross the entire WAN instead of just the local branch network. Imagine the impact on application performance! And what about your mission-critical applications?

Consider Support for Consolidation

In evaluating a server consolidation project, be aware of the larger impacts to the user experience. Beyond file access traffic, think of the wide implications on IT service traffic and your business applications. Consider leveraging new file server technologies from Microsoft, including R2 release for Windows® 2003.

Packeteer Solution: Get the Facts

Packeteer provides the tools to assess server consolidation impact and deploy accordingly. Identify applications on the network, measure existing capacity as well as network use of DNS, DHCP, CIFS and print traffic—and get an accurate assessment WAN impact when LAN traffic traverses it. Even benchmark CIFS performance in a LAN versus WAN environment. Then evaluate your consolidation design, look at alternatives for delivering file access and see if the new design meets user needs and ROI targets.

Increase Capacity and Accelerate Performance

Packeteer's advanced compression provides extra headroom for centralized file access. By increasing WAN capacity, room is made for new centralized services. Also, our TCP optimization techniques minimize latency and protocol design bandwidth constraints to increase performance of critical applications.

Critical Application Performance Assured

With Packeteer, performance of critical enterprise applications and the user experience are assured even with unpredictable and increased traffic patterns. Deep classification of application performance along with advanced QoS mechanisms and protocol acceleration deliver enterprise applications meeting enterprise needs.

Look Deep with Layer 7 Plus Visibility

With Layer 7 Plus visibility, Packeteer solutions deliver deep capabilities in identifying and controlling common traffic—including CIFS, DNS, DHCP, print, VoIP, CRM, Web, P2P and others—and by tracking Microsoft's underlying CIFS changes in R2. This level of visibility helps you identify all the potential impacts to your network.

Realize Consolidation Potential

With Packeteer, you can recognize true savings with centralized data centers that perform at an enterprise level. By understanding the impact of a consolidation project, increasing WAN capacity and assuring delivery of critical applications, Packeteer provides the tools to successfully implement server consolidation projects.

Tacit for Wide Area File Services (WAFS)

If you decide that centralizing all file access is important, but you want to deliver fast file access and critical IT services like print, DNS and DHCP at a local level—Packeteer has teamed with Tacit Networks® for the complete WAFS and server consolidation solution.