RE: OT: Is WAAS that bad?

We are talking about two devices here - Riverbed and Cisco WAAS. Both
support fail-to-wire:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Verticals/Distributed_RD/dist_rd.h
tml

High Availability
The WAEs offer many built-in high-availability features. It is recommended
to configure the disk subsystem with RAID 1 protection. RAID 1 is mandatory
when two or more drives are installed in a WAE, so failure of a physical
drive does not affect normal operations. Multiple network interfaces are
also available, providing interface failover. When connected to separate
switches in active/standby mode, the standby interface protects the WAE from
switch failure.

WCCP provides load-balancing and high availability through a built-in
load-balancing mechanism that distributes load amongst WAEs within a service
group. The WCCP protocol can have up to 32 routers and 32 devices (WAEs) per
service group.

Since Cisco WAAS deployments are transparent to the application, the PTC
client and servers are not aware that the Cisco WAAS is optimizing traffic
flows. High availability is built into the WCCP interception. If a WAE fails
or WCCP is not active, traffic flows will continue to operate without being
optimized.

Inline deployments allow the WAE to be physically inserted between two
network devices such as the branch switch and the branch WAN router. The
Cisco WAAS inline card has four 10/100/1000BaseT Ethernet ports in two port
groups. Each port group provides a fail-to-wire bypass service with
mechanical relays to ensure that network connectivity is not interrupted
should a device fail or a software crash be encountered by the WAE.

RB:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=riverbed%20steelhead%20fail-to-bypass
&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CFIQFjAF&url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.riverbed.com%2Fdown
load.htm%3Ffilename%3Dpublic%2Fdoc%2Fsteelhead%2F7.0.2%2Ficg.pdf&ei=1FxEUKao
LYeqiALQx4DwDQ&usg=AFQjCNHsbO9I07hoRIA15cT-MW41ltICKQ

Fail-to-Wire (Bypass) Mode
All Steelhead appliance models and in-path network interface cards support a
fail-to-wire mode. In the
event of a failure or loss of power, the Steelhead appliance goes into
bypass mode and the traffic passes
through uninterrupted.
Many in-path network interface cards (NICs) also support a fail-to-block
mode in which case if there is a
failure or loss of power, the Steelhead appliance LAN and WAN interfaces
power down and stop bridging
traffic. The default failure mode is fail-to-wire mode.
If there is a serious problem with the Steelhead appliance or it is not
powered on, it goes into bypass mode
to prevent a single point of failure

Keep in mind both need to be wired correctly.

In-path steelheads will discover each other (packets are marked as they pass
through the steelhead, sneaky stuff but cool). Out-of-path require rules /
targets.

T
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody_at_groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody_at_groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Alexander Lim
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2012 8:50 PM
To: Travis Niedens
Cc: Cisco certification
Subject: Re: OT: Is WAAS that bad?

Hi Travis,

Thanks for the response.
But I thought regardless using WCCP or in-line, we still need to make sure
the traffic flows symmetrically in the network.
My Cisco SE recommends using WCCP instead of inline. He said fail to wire
will not work if software hangs/crashed. Other than that, it will be more
difficult to isolate WOC when doing problem determination because all
traffic pass through the device.

BTW, do you know if there is any blog/web thats compare the app supported by
Riverbed vs WAAS? I tried googling but couldn't find, may be there isn't
any.

Regards,
Alexander Lim

On 3 Sep, 2012, at 7:23 AM, 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 Mon Sep 03 2012 - 00:36:51 ART