The R-Team Rescues Replication

“If you have a Replication problem, if no one else can help, maybe you should call the R-Team”

As the Senior Sales Engineer for Australia (a continent the size of North America), I’ve become used to our clever Australia/New Zealand SE team solving tough problems for customers over the past 3.5 years.  However, once in a while, customers make things even more interesting by asking us to “deliver the impossible”.

Read on for more details of how the R-Team allowed an Enterprise customer to deliver EMC SRDF/A replication between States without expensive increases to WAN bandwidth.

In early 2008, the phone rang at the R-Team Australian HQ, with an interesting request from one of our large customers.  This customer, impressed with the WAN Optimization delivered by our Steelhead appliances across its Global WAN, asked if we’d be able to help with a large Disaster Recovery initiative that was facing challenges. 

The customer had just purchased two large EMC DMX Symmetrix storage arrays (one in Sydney, the other in Melbourne) and wanted to implement SRDF/A replication between the Cities for their mission critical systems.  The problem?  EMC’s detailed analysis of their rate of change of ‘track’ data on the arrays meant that they’d need an expensive and dedicated 100Mb/s link between States, while what the customer actually had was a 20Mb/s link which needed to be shared with their usual WAN traffic (Email, file sharing etc.)

Knowing that the smart Engineering team at Riverbed had incorporated the ability to optimize SRDF/A Data Replication data into RiOS™ (the Riverbed Optimization System) and that we were working together with EMC on formal SRDF/A qualification, one of my colleagues (another senior member of the Australian SE team and a Cisco CCIE) sprang into action to solve this customer's immediate challenge.  Through focus by Riverbed, our loyal customer, our storage-savvy Partner and EMC’s Australian SE team, this particular customer’s configuration was tuned and certified under EMC’s custom qualification program.

The joint EMC and Riverbed solution was a roaring success and enabled the customer to “deliver the impossible” – replicating its Enterprise systems across States via SRDF/A without increasing bandwidth - and it has been in Production since mid 2008.

    

A screen shot of Riverbed’s RiOS solution delivering 8.2X data reduction for SRDF/A data

Today, with the finalization of EMC E-Lab Qualification of Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances, delivering these kinds of benefits to EMC SRDF/A customers has become even simpler – no longer requiring custom qualification.  For details please see the following Press Release:

http://www.riverbed.com/company/news/press_releases/press_020309.php

So, do you do have a tough Replication problem?  If so, Think Fast™ and drop me a line..  The R-Team will be happy to speed into action to help in our RiOS-accelerated black and grey GMC Vandura van!