Kingston Technology Moves to a Broadband WAN with Silver Peak
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Customer Profile Kingston Technology Moves to a Broadband WAN with Silver Peak Memory Products Leader Improves Replication Performance over Distance while Reducing Dependency on MPLS Replicating data to a remote data center Maintaining data in Taiwan meant replicat- hundreds or even thousands of miles away ing data from the United States over a long Customer: Kingston Technology helps enterprises improve the chances of distance WAN, and that proved to be a surviving a regional disaster and ensur- challenge for two reasons: ing business continuity. But when dis- • Extending MPLS networking into the tance between sites increases, application region would have cost the company performance suffers and networking costs thousands-of-dollars a month, and would escalate. This is why Kingston Technol- take more than a month to get connected. ogy, one of the world’s largest independent manufacturers of memory products, turned • The lack of performance when transfer- to Silver Peak to re-design its WAN. ring data over a long distance WAN would put the company’s recovery Kingston is headquartered in Fountain point objectives (RPOs) in jeopardy. Valley, California and employs more than 4,000 people worldwide. The company has Frustration with the high cost and complex- Business Challenges a regional headquarters in Taiwan and the ity of MPLS had a ripple effect across the • Lengthy replication workloads put United Kingdom, a disaster recovery (DR) business with other applications as well. DR plan in jeopardy site in Taiwan, and branch offices in six Even over MPLS, the company’s voice-over- • MPLS too expensive and complex other locations. Kingston relies heavily on IP (VoIP) calls with Avaya Aura Communi- for connecting remote sites virtualization, and its globally distributed cation Manager were unclear at times due • Sluggish enterprise applications network and disaster recovery facility are to packet loss and out-of-order packets. essential to maintaining business continuity. SQL queries generated by the company’s inventory application also took too long to fulfill and required too much bandwidth to Network Background Replication Challenge Prompts operate. Users were often forced to wait New Look at the Network • 11 locations throughout Asia Pacific, for long screen refreshes. North America, and Europe Kingston began developing a disaster • Data centers in Shanghai, Shenzhen, recovery plan in 2010 after human error The Rise of the Broadband WAN Taiwan, the US, the UK, and Ireland had taken out some of the power circuits in • Internet speeds ranging from its data center. The company initially con- Leveraging broadband for the WAN offers 1.5 Mbps to 100 Mbps sidered a Las Vegas colocation facility for relief in the form of greater flexibility and its DR site before selecting the company’s faster deployments, but raises concerns existing Taiwanese facility, which could be about security and reliable performance implemented at a fraction of the cost. over long distances. Kingston wanted to Silver Peak Results reap the benefits of Internet connectivity, The company’s replication workloads in- • Secure, optimized broadband but had not made the transition from MPLS enabled in just two hours clude Zerto to copy Virtual Machine to Internet because of the security and • Maxava and Zerto replication Disk (VMDK) files that support many of reliability concerns. In Taiwan, Internet performance improved by 10x the company’s applications, Maxava running connectivity could be provisioned much Remote Journal to protect the AS/400s, more quickly and easily than MPLS. • Internet throughput increased and IBM Notes replication. by as much as 80% 1 Customer Profile Kingston Technology required a software- Flores commented, “Performance was great based solution for the WAN that would with Silver Peak, but the huge benefit was embrace the company’s investment in the ease-of-deployment with the software.” virtualization, accelerate data replication Flores leveraged Kingston’s existing invest- performance, and allow the company to ment in virtualization to simplify deploy- take advantage of Internet connectivity in ments in the remote offices. Using software a secure and optimized manner. Silver Peak instead of hardware appliances allowed WAN software was an ideal fit. Flores to reduce Kingston’s acquisition “Being in the free trade zone in Shanghai costs. The company avoided shipping costs has its shipping challenges,” says David and delays, tariffs, and any specialized IT Flores, senior network administrator at resources that would be needed to unpack, Kingston. “With Silver Peak software for rack and enable any new hardware. the WAN, I could avoid those hassles and Flores added, “Having one Silver Peak soft- connect our international offices in China ware image and one configuration to con- and Europe in a matter of hours – without trol and accelerate our Internet connectiv- “With Silver Peak’s software leaving my desk.” ity is outstanding! No other solution I have for the WAN, I could ever worked with has this much flexibility.” Software-Defined WAN is Key connect our international Silver Peak helped Kingston Technology The Silver Peak Impact offices in China and Europe flexibly and securely extend replication into With Silver Peak deployed in its network, Taiwan via the most cost-effective source in a matter of hours – Kingston improved the performance of of connectivity available. With Silver Peak’s numerous applications. Replication today without leaving my desk.” WAN software, Kingston was able to avoid consumes significantly less WAN band- expensive MPLS technology and use secure David Flores, Senior Network Administrator width, allowing better usage of the Kingston Internet connectivity to dramatically reduce network, with Maxava and Zerto replica- its WAN costs and complexity. tion improved by as much as 10X, and Delivered as a virtual machine, Silver Peak Lotus Notes replication now consuming offers a simplified deployment model and 70 percent less bandwidth. accelerated IPsec support that prompted a Flores tapped Silver Peak to compensate for company-wide transition away from MPLS the poor quality of the company’s Internet to Internet connectivity. The Silver Peak connections. With Silver Peak, out-of-order software is now helping Kingston improve packets were repaired, with the greatest application performance at all remote sites. impact occurring between Taiwan and the As a WAN overlay, Kingston benefits from US, where 2.11 percent of packets had been unprecedented levels of visibility, control delivered out-of-order. Packet loss was and security over all traffic traversing its also improved across several other routes, Internet WAN. In addition to improving particularly within China where Silver Peak application and network performance, the reduced loss by as much as 24 percent, Silver Peak software gives Kingston the flex- improving the overall throughput of the ibility to deploy new sites rapidly, as well as connection by 80 percent. non-disruptively extend, move, or change existing sites as business demands evolve. 888.598.7325 | www.silver-peak.com © Silver Peak Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 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