RE: OT: Is WAAS that bad?

I don't feel I need to be careful based on my experience and what the
vendors have stated - 6x optimization isn't nearly as beneficial as 50x - in
fact neither will push you to optimize if your traffic is primarily SQL -
thanks though. In fact with the cost of some acceleration products it may be
cheaper to upgrade bandwidth (capEx versus OpEx) than to buy the hardware to
compress, optimize and use pointers to bring down the amount of data on
wire. This is a balance that every company must decide on.

Gartner is not always the best bellwether in some technologies as they can
be biased; part of the WAAS bad rap does come from them. With several
products over the years I have found it better to look at other performance
metrics and lab them in the environment versus making a business decision
off a quadrant system. Many of their reviews are based on customer surveys
and anecdotes - some of which have a VERY SMALL sample size - say 3
customers. From an engineering and statistical point of view this is not
accurate or fair. Additionally, several companies have begun shunning
Gartner or even suing them for the negative impact they have on business.

T

-----Original Message-----
From: nobody_at_groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody_at_groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of Zack
(Doc)
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2012 6:36 PM
To: Travis Niedens
Cc: Alexander Lim; alexeim73_at_gmail.com; Cisco certification
Subject: Re: OT: Is WAAS that bad?

Alexander,

I haven't worked with WAAS 5 yet, but I did earlier versions of WAAS, as
well as multiple versions of Riverbed as well as the Citrix accelerators.
 I always refer back to the Gartner report, and my own RFPs have borne out
the same results.

I'm not a fan of WCCP... it is a 4 letter word. My biggest problem is that
you have to be really careful on the platforms you choose. I found that
some "router" platforms switch from hardware switching to software switching
in the presence of WCCP, and like the Cisco 6500, they can't handle it.
Other platforms might not have such a hard time.

Travis,
You have to be careful with generalizations. I've found that COTS SQL can
actually do well, but many home grown apps are a problem. But, yes, FTP and
CIFS can have significant improvements.

Zack

On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 7:23 PM, Travis Niedens <niedentj_at_hotmail.com> wrote:

> Having worked with both WAAS and Riverbed, WAAS 5 brings Cisco back to
> a decent position - they have traditionally been behind on most things
> that Riverbed has done. Inline versus OOB - depends on the design /
> traffic. I personally am not a fan of having to use WCCP. With WCCP
> you need to make sure you have the proper rules on both ends to ensure
> symmetric optimization. With inline you need to worry about throughput
> and proper wiring for fail-open.
>
> Do keep in mind that there are certain protocols / traffic types that
> wan acceleration can and cannot optimize. An example of this would be
> SQL (Oracle, MSSQL, MySql). Both vendors claim a much lower
> optimization than say CIFS, FTP, etc. Dynamic content is difficult to
> optimize and you really just see the benefits with TCP optimization -
> even using the compression doesn't do all that much on text outputs from a
DB call.
>
> T
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nobody_at_groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody_at_groupstudy.com] On Behalf
> Of Alexander Lim
> Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2012 4:05 PM
> To: alexeim73_at_gmail.com
> Cc: Cisco certification
> Subject: Re: OT: Is WAAS that bad?
>
> Hi Alexei,
>
> Based on your exp, does SteelHead have problem with WCCP? And is its
> transparent mode working as good as tunnel mode?
>
> Regards,
> Alexander Lim
>
> On 1 Sep, 2012, at 7:43 PM, Alexei Monastyrnyi <alexeim73_at_gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Comparing to Riverbed WAAS is absolutely behind... first hand
> > experience
> from rolling out and supporting both on large scale.
> >
> > A>
> >
> >
> > On 9/1/2012 3:29 PM, Alexander Lim wrote:
> >> Hi Experts,
> >>
> >> While looking for some comparison between Cisco WAAS and Riverbed
> SteelHead, I found this article
>
> http://m.networkworld.com/community/blog/cisco-finally-shows-waas-app-
> nav-ci
> s
> co-live-0. Is it telling the truth? Is Cisco WAAS really that bad?
> What do you guys use in your network?
> >>
> >> Thanks for sharing.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> Alex
> >>
> >>
> >> Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
> >>
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Received on Sun Sep 02 2012 - 19:47:11 ART