Deploying Cisco Wide Area Application Services - Hardcover

Seils, Zach; Christner, Joel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1587054949 ISBN 13: 9781587054945

Publisher: Cisco Systems, 2008

Synopsis

Design and deploy Cisco WAN optimization and application acceleration solutions for the enterprise WAN

 

Today, IT organizations are increasingly squeezed by competing demands. They must support more distributed users who demand greater availability and performance. They must protect their digital assets with far more robust security. And they must do it all while gaining far greater control over cost. Distributing IT resources increases management, hardware, and software overhead, but centralizing IT can worsen application performance. There is a solution to this quandary: Cisco application acceleration and WAN optimization technologies that permit IT to safely centralize distributed IT resources, meeting user performance expectations without replacing existing network infrastructure.

 

Deploying Cisco Wide Area Application Services is the first comprehensive guide to designing and deploying solutions with these Cisco technologies. Zach Seils and Joel Christner show how to deploy Cisco WAAS in a scalable, transparent, and seamless fashion that responds to both your business and technical challenges. Writing for network design and implementation engineers and other networking professionals, they cover the entire planning and configuration process. Drawing on their extensive experience implementing WAAS in the enterprise, they also offer real-world implementation examples and case studies–including full chapters on network, branch office, and data center integration.

 

Zach Seils, CCIE No. 7861, is a technical leader in the Cisco Advanced Services Data Center Networking Practice, where he specializes in designing, deploying, and troubleshooting application acceleration solutions for the largest Cisco enterprise and service provider customers.

 

Joel Christner, CCIE No. 15311, is director of product management for Reconnex Corporation, the industry leader in data loss prevention (DLP) solutions. Prior to Reconnex, Joel was senior manager of technical marketing for the Application Delivery Business Unit (ADBU) at Cisco, where he helped drive the product and technical strategy for Cisco Wide Area Application Services. Christner is coauthor of Application Acceleration and WAN Optimization Fundamentals.

 

• Centrally provision applications to employees in any location without compromising performance
• Reduce costs by centralizing servers, storage, and applications by leveraging optimization capabilities that integrate cleanly with your existing infrastructure
• Thoroughly understand Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) and Wide Area Application Engine (WAE) and the business benefits provided by them

- -       Perform effective WAAS planning, discovery, and analysis

- -         Use WAAS and interception mechanisms such as WCCP or inline to transparently optimize flows traversing your network for end users accessing centrally deployed and centrally  managed applications, files, and other information

- -         Integrate application acceleration and optimization into data centers, branch offices, and other environments

- -         Learn how to use the Cisco WAAS Central Manager, WAE device GUI, and command-line interface to configure, manage, and troubleshoot

 

This book is part of the Networking Technology Series from Cisco Press, which offers networking professionals valuable information for constructing efficient networks, understanding new technologies, and building successful careers.

About this title

About the Author

Zach Seils, CCIE No. 7861, is a technical leader in the Cisco Advanced Services Data Center Networking Practice. Zach’s focus is the design, deployment, and troubleshooting of data center and branch application services solutions for Cisco largest enterprise and service provider customers. Zach is frequently engaged with partners and internal Cisco engineers worldwide to advise on the design, implementation, and troubleshooting of Cisco WAAS. In addition to working closely with partners and customers, Zach collaborates with various Cisco business units on product enhancements, testing, and application services architectures. Prior to joining Cisco, Zach spent six years in various senior technical roles at a managed service provider.

Joel Christner, CCIE No. 15311, is the director of product management for Reconnex Corporation, the industry leader in data loss prevention (DLP) solutions. At Reconnex, Joel drives the product strategy and direction for a comprehensive portfolio of solutions for protecting corporate sensitive information and ensuring compliance with industry and government regulation. Prior to joining Reconnex, Joel was the senior manager of technical marketing for the Application Delivery Business Unit (ADBU) at Cisco. Joel led the technical marketing engineering team and helped drive product strategy as a lead contributor to the product management organization. Along with product strategy, Joel and his team were responsible for global sales enablement, including technical whitepapers, product presentations, transfer of information, and competitive leadership. Joel is co-author of the book

Application Acceleration and WAN Optimization Fundamentals (Cisco Press), which outlines architecture and relevance for WAN optimization and application acceleration technologies

in today’s dynamic I/T organizations. Joel was previously a senior technical marketing engineer within ADBU, and was also part of the data center and storage networking advanced technology team within Cisco prior to joining ADBU. Joel’s background and experience includes information security, content, data center networking and security, storage networking, and application networking services. Joel is presently an MS Computer Science student at Columbia University in New York, NY, and holds a BS in Electronics Engineering Technology. Joel is co-author of Application Acceleration and WAN Optimization Fundamentals (Cisco Press), which outlines architecture and relevance for WAN optimization and application acceleration technologies in today’s dynamic IT organizations.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Introduction

IT organizations are realizing the benefits of infrastructure consolidation and virtualization—cost savings, operational savings, better posture toward disaster recovery—and the challenges associated. Consolidating infrastructure increases the distance between the remote office worker and the tools they need to ensure productivity—applications, servers, content, and more. Application acceleration and WAN optimization solutions such as Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) bridge the divide between consolidation and performance to enable a high-performance consolidated infrastructure.

Goals and Methods

The goal of this book is to familiarize you with the concepts and fundamentals of sizing and deploying Cisco WAAS in your environment. This book provides a technical introduction to the product, followed by deployment sizing guidelines, through integration techniques, and configuration of major components and subsystems. This book provides you with 95 percent or more of the knowledge that you need to ensure a successful deployment of Cisco WAAS in your environment, including configuration tips, pointers, and notes that will guide you through the process.

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is written for anyone who is responsible for the design and deployment of Cisco WAAS in their network environment. The text assumes the reader has a basic knowledge of data networking, specifically TCP/IP and basic routing and switching technologies.

As the WAAS technology continues to evolve, the content in this book will provide a solid framework to build on. Mastering the topics in this book will ensure that you can approach any WAAS design project with confidence.

How This Book Is Organized

Although this book could be read cover to cover, it is designed to be flexible and allow you to easily move between chapters and sections of chapters to cover just the material that you need more work with. While each of the chapters builds upon the foundation laid by previous chapters, enough background information is provided in each chapter to allow it to be a standalone reference work in and of itself. Chapter 1 provides a technical examination of the Cisco WAAS product and its core capabilities, along with use cases and the "why you care" about each of the solution components. Chapters 2 through 9 are the core chapters and, although they can be covered in any order, it is recommended that they be covered sequentially for continuity. Chapter 10 provides a series of use cases for the Cisco WAAS product family, which can also provide insight into how other customers are using this technology to meet their business infrastructure requirements.

• Chapter 1, "Introduction to Cisco Wide Area Application Services": This chapter provides a technical examination and overview of Cisco WAAS and its core components.

• Chapter 2, "Cisco Wide Area Application Engine (WAE) Family": This chapter discusses the Cisco WAE appliance and router-integrated network module hardware family, positioning of each of the platforms, and system specifications that impact the design of a solution relative to the performance and scalability of each component.

• Chapter 3, "Planning, Discovery, and Analysis": Planning is a critical part to any successful WAAS deployment. Spending ample time at the beginning of the project to understand the requirements, including those imposed by the existing network environment, is critical for a successful deployment. Chapter 3 gives you a head start by outlining the key topic areas that should be taken into consideration as you are planning your WAAS deployment.

• Chapter 4, "Network Integration and Interception": This chapter provides an in-depth review of the network integration and interception capabilities of Cisco WAAS. The topics discussed in Chapter 4 form the foundation for the design discussions in subsequent chapters.

• Chapter 5, "Branch Office Network Integration": This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the different design options for deploying Cisco WAAS in the branch office environment. Several design options are discussed, including detailed configuration examples.

• Chapter 6, "Data Center Network Integration": This chapter examines the key design considerations for deploying WAAS in the data center. Sample design models and configuration examples are provided throughout the chapter. Best practices recommendations for scaling to support hundreds or thousands of remote sites are also included.

• Chapter 7, "System and Device Management": This chapter walks you through the initial deployment of the Central Manager and each of the accelerator WAEs, including the setup script, registration, activation, and use of management techniques such as device groups. This chapter also provides you with a series of helpful sections on commonly used configuration items, such as syslog and SNMP.

• Chapter 8, "Configuring WAN Optimization": This chapter guides you through the WAN optimization framework provided by Cisco WAAS, including each of the optimization techniques and the Application Traffic Policy manager. This chapter also examines the configuration of optimization policies, verification that policies are applied correctly, and an examination of statistics and reports.

• Chapter 9, "Configuring Application Acceleration": This chapter focuses on the application acceleration components of Cisco WAAS, including configuration, verification, and how the components interact. This chapter also looks closely at how these components leverage the underlying WAN optimization framework, and how they are managed.

• Chapter 10, "Case Studies": This chapter brings together various topics discussed in the previous chapters through several case studies. The case studies presented focus on real-world deployment examples, discussing the key design considerations, options, and final device-level configurations.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cisco Systems
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1587054949
• ISBN 13: 9781587054945
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 377