Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

THE SERVER-LESS BRANCH OFFICE
By Offer Fabian, VP of Marketing, DiskSites Inc

Today's enterprise is distributed by nature. Whether as a result of acquisition, market or customer proximity requirements, or pure-play globalization, IT departments are struggling to get a handle on the growing number of disparate islands of IT -- islands that contain critical corporate data.

These disparate islands of IT do not in most cases employ local IT staff and the burden then falls to the enterprise IT team or, in other cases, may be outsourced at significant expense. As a result, a considerable portion of the enterprise workforce, 87 percent according to recent research, is left at the mercy of an unreliable infrastructure which costs a fortune to own and maintain.

Why Not Centralize?

It is true that reducing the price of data communication links makes it easier (and more affordable) to create a mesh of inter-location connections. Users operating from these remote locations may access the corporate data center over leased lines, a VPN over the public Internet, a satellite connection or land lines. These various wide area networks (WAN) connections are all measured by the bandwidth provided and the latency imposed on passing traffic. While local area networks (LANs) enjoy bandwidths of 100Mb to 1Gb and sub millisecond latency at a negligible cost, this is not true for WANs.

For example, let us consider opening and saving a 600KB Microsoft Word file. While requiring merely one-two seconds to open over LAN and two-three seconds to save, the numbers are different when the WAN is involved. With a latency of 100ms (the typical long-distance latency in the US) the same file would take over a minute to open on a 1Mbps link and a minute and a half to save. One can clearly see why working directly over WAN is not an option.

The RBO IT Manager's Dilemma

IT managers are caught between two conflicting forces: the distributed nature of today's enterprise on the one hand and the unwieldy WAN connection on the other. In order to control costs, ensure regulatory compliance and improve organizational security, many organizations are turning to centralization and resource consolidation. Traditional methods of consolidation, however, often adversely impact remote workers' user experiences. As a result, these users resist adopting these methods. Additionally, these methods often fail to deliver on the promise of reduced overhead, as organizations must typically increase resources in order to centralize both the data and the applications.

WAFS To The Rescue

Today there is an innovative breed of appliances that was designed specifically to address the growing pain caused by the lack of global, dynamic file system -- appliances that circumvent the built-in constraints of WANs. They do so not by throwing more bandwidth at the problem rather, they tackle the root cause of the problem: chatty protocols designed for LANs that require multiple sequential transactions to perform the simplest of tasks.

These wide area file services (WAFS) solutions solve the IT manager's dilemma by enabling the enterprise to both consolidate resources and maintain LAN-like user experience over WAN. They save organizational capital spending and reduce operational expenses of managing disparate servers. WAFS mollifies dissatisfied users, responds to senior management requirements and, at the same time, eliminates distributed IT management stress.

The Server-Less Office

WAFS appliances result in a server-less office where file, print, DNS, DHCP and a host of additional server functions are replaced by a single, zero-maintenance networking appliance.

How it works: The data center optimizer at corporate headquarters is placed next to the organization's file servers, and the branch optimizer appliance is installed at each RBO. Users access and save files to the branch optimizer as if it was their local file server. The branch optimizer then communicates, in real-time, with the data center optimizer to ensure that files are accessed and saved to corporate file servers. This transaction is entirely transparent to remote users who enjoy the speed and simplicity of having what appears to be a local file server solution while, in fact, they are seamlessly working with the data center file server.

Pass-through authentication technology enables this seamless integration and transparent operation. It utilizes, and relies on, the existing user and access authorization, auditing and quota management procedures enforcing it globally.

The synchronous operation of WAFS means that data can never be lost in the "pipe." When a "file save" operation is requested, for example, confirmation is delivered after the file has been securely saved to the remote file server. By not deploying "store-and-forward" or "replication-on-demand" solutions, WAFS provides a data transport solution that guarantees the key issues of data coherency and reliability.

WAFS Benefits

First and foremost WAFS provides cost savings, which translates to a return on investment of six months or less resulting from removing the multiple servers from the RBO along with backup and restore, technical support.

WAFS also delivers these additional benefits:

• Ensured data integrity -- With WAFS, there is only a single copy of any given file in the global enterprise that is stored in the data center. As the system is fully synchronous, data can never be lost in the "pipe" as is the case when it is saved to a local device and replicated later.

• Enforced security and quota management -- Relying on the best IT practices of the data center, sensitive enterprise data is more secure as corporate policies are strictly enforced. Managing user quotas, authentication, access rights and auditing -- fundamental data center operations -- are now enforced globally to all users of the enterprise.

• True global collaboration -- An enterprise task force, across locations, time zones and even continents, working on a common set of projects can now collaborate globally without constantly having to resolve document management issues.

• Enhanced business continuity -- With WAFS, DRP is simplified considerably as there no longer is a need to accommodate remote IT infrastructures because everything is handled within the data center. Data is backed up locally and if a file needs to be restored, it is restored in the data center and immediately available to enterprises users world-wide. Reduced management overhead -- Last, but by no means least of the WAFS benefits, is reduction in management overhead. By replacing maintenance-heavy servers with networking appliances, the enterprise IT infrastructure is centralized, providing IT managers with control and leverage facilitating effective management.

Summary

With the introduction of WAFS solutions for global enterprises, the nightmarish reality of managing RBO IT is quickly disappearing. Users can benefit from having their data reside in the safe haven of the data center, while their data is delivered to them at LAN-like speeds over a WAN. The effect on the enterprise budget is immediate and savings start to accrue from day one, as over-worked and under-staffed IT departments free the resources and budgets that are no longer required at multiple remote branch offices. With a typical return on investment (ROI) of six months, it is no wonder that growing numbers of IT administrators and corporate managers of distributed enterprises are embracing this new solution every day.