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ShareWindows Server 2008: A WAN Op Strategy
Posted by Randy George on July 30, 2010
Bluecoat, Citrix, F5, Riverbed and other similar vendors all offer highly functional and well performing WAN Optimization appliances. Unfortunately, those high-end solutions can be either overkill or over budget for some organizations. So, instead of buying the whole pizza, why not try a slice first?
I don't think there's an IT Manager out there who is happy with the bandwidth they have on their WAN links. WAN bandwidth feels like a paycheck sometimes: you're never quite happy with it and you always want more. The reality is that we all need to work within our budgets and get the most out of what we have, and if you don't have the budget for WAN optimizations now, then you need to get creative.
Surprisingly, you can actually introduce a somewhat effective sliver of WAN optimization via Windows Server 2008 BranchCache. BranchCache doesn't do TCP compression or acceleration in the traditional sense, but it does lighten the load on the WAN through its ability to serve out frequently accessed content at the branch office.
Organizations that enjoy active Select, Enterprise or Open licensing agreements can essentially add BranchCache for no money up front. Sure, you'll need to true up with Microsoft at some point and pay for the extra server licenses, but if you have the hardware sitting around, you can at least implement a short term solution for lightening the load on your WAN links.
Aside from BranchCache, Microsoft tweaked the TCP stack for better performance in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, and it optimized SMB for better CIFS performance. We're not saying to scrap your plans to buy Riverbed, but if dollars are tight, and you're already deploying Server 2008 anyway, assess what Microsoft is giving you out of the box. It might be "good enough" for your needs.
Comment by Adam on August 4, 2010 10:51 AM
One of the popular usage scenarios of WAN Accelerators is RDP acceleration. In addition to hardware solutions, there are also lower-cost software solutions for such a requirement. Ericom Blaze is a software based RDP Accelerator which can work standalone and also in conjunction with WAN Accelerators and add a lot of value to the network.
Ericom Blaze has three main advantages over general purpose hardware-based WAN accelerators: performance, security and price.
Ericom Blaze provides better performance for RDP because it was custom designed for it - Blaze introspects the RDP protocol and applies dedicated optimizations. For example, Ericom Blaze identifies images transmitted inside RDP and applies dedicated image compression algorithms to them, and in addition applies bulk compression to the entire RDP data stream. General purpose WAN accelerators only apply generic optimizations such as bulk compression and caching.
As a result, while a leading WAN accelerator vendor claims 12% to 38% RDP speed improvements, Blaze can compress RDP by as much as 98.7%.
Blaze takes care of the RDP choppiness while network appliances do not. If you display a movie frame with Blaze, it will display it as a single frame, providing native PC-like presentation, while network appliances will just compress the traffic and the Microsoft RDP client will still display a choppy frame (the frame will display in tiles).
Ericom Blaze provides better security for RDP than general purpose WAN accelerators because these hardware solutions require RDP’s own encryption to be disabled so that they can compress and cache it. As a result, the communication from the RDP host to the server-side hardware appliance, and from the client-side hardware appliance to the RDP client is not secure. Only the communication between server-side appliance and the client-side appliance is encrypted.
Ericom Blaze is installed directly on the RDP host and RDP client, and provides end-to-end encryption for complete security. Also, Ericom Blaze can work with both encrypted and unencrypted RDP.
Ericom Blaze is less expensive than hardware-based WAN accelerators because it is a software-only solution, and does not require specialized hardware.
To top it off, Ericom Blaze is very easy to deploy and install, and usually does not require any configuration. In most cases, Ericom Blaze can be downloaded, installed and ready for use within minutes.
Read more about Blaze and download a free evaluation at:
http://www.ericom.com/ericom_blaze.asp?URL_ID=708
Adam
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