At VMware Partner Exchange 2015, Silver Peak announced that its WAN optimization software has tested and pre-validated the new VMware vSphere 6 Replication solution to accelerate remote replication. Silver Peak’s software-based approach to data acceleration overcomes WAN bandwidth, distance, and quality impediments to help storage and IT administrators easily meet recovery point objectives (RPO) while saving money on WAN infrastructure.

Data protection is essential for business continuity and disaster recovery, and that includes the protection of virtual machines (VMs). With VMware vSphere 6 Replication, organizations can quickly and easily deploy a data protection solution that frees them from storage lock-in and provides flexibility. For example, customers can leverage a “seed copy” of VM data for initial synchronization and track changed disk areas so that only the deltas are replicated. This ensures efficient utilization of network resources. Silver Peak’s high-performance WAN optimization software enables more VM data to be replicated in less time, and over longer distances.

For example, a cross-country 45 Mbps Internet VPN might only produce 22 Mbps of actual throughput for replication because of the effects of latency and loss. Replicating 64 gigabytes (GB) of data under these conditions would take approximately 6.6 hours to complete. When Silver Peak optimizes the network, a 45 Mbps link can deliver throughput as high as 365 Mbps or greater, and the same 64 GB dataset can be replicated in just 24 minutes.

“We use VMware vSphere Replication to replicate several dozen VMs,” said Sam Stemmons, systems consultant with eTech Solutions, a Silver Peak and VMware partner based in Oklahoma City with a team of IT consultants and systems engineers delivering the value of information systems. “Before we implemented Silver Peak, we had to restrict replication to off hours to avoid saturating the link. Now with Silver Peak in place, we run with a 15 min RPO on all servers with plenty of bandwidth left over for other apps!”

“VMware vSphere Replication provides a tightly-integrated, array-agnostic solution for protecting application data and workloads,” said Mike Adams, director, vSphere Product Marketing, VMware. “Together with Silver Peak, we are delivering an easy-to-deploy and cost-effective solution for vSphere and application data protection.”

Silver Peak delivers the highest-capacity WAN optimization for VMware virtual environments, providing multi-gigabit optimization over the WAN. Deployed as a virtual machine on VMware vSphere, the software solves WAN performance problems by deduplicating and compressing WAN traffic, repairing dropped and out-of-order packets, and overcoming the effects of latency. A free 30-day trial of Silver Peak software can be downloaded on the Silver Peak software marketplace.

“VMware vSphere 6 Replication provides an efficient and tightly integrated hypervisor-based solution for VM replication, and as a long-standing VMware partner, we are helping our joint customers overcome the WAN performance gap that persists today,” said Marc Trimuschat, vice president of alliances for Silver Peak. “By combining Silver Peak virtual WAN optimization with the new VMware vSphere 6 Replication, enterprises can meet their RPOs, lower disaster recovery costs, and extend distances between replication sites using an existing WAN infrastructure.”