Thursday, 28 June 2007

Riverbed, EqualLogic Enable Remote Access to Data Centres

Riverbed Technology, Inc. and EqualLogic have announced that a growing number of businesses are using EqualLogic and Riverbed solutions together. The companies claim that the....

Riverbed Technology, Inc. and EqualLogic have announced that a growing number of businesses are using EqualLogic and Riverbed solutions together. The companies claim that the combined Riverbed and EqualLogic offerings provide customers with faster data replication between remote sites, while reducing the bandwidth needed to replicate data.

“EqualLogic has been a great partner, as seen by our growing list of common customers. It aligns Riverbed with an iSCSI SAN leader, and gives us entry into the promising SAN market,” said Venugopal Pai, senior director, alliances for Riverbed. “Any time you need to replicate data from remote sites to a central location, you have to use a WAN connection, and without our Steelhead appliances, transmission over the WAN can be expensive and slow. Today, joint customers of Riverbed and EqualLogic are able transmit data at near LAN-like speeds.”

EqualLogic includes data replication as part of its all-inclusive software features in its PS Series storage arrays, so customers can easily turn on disaster recovery and remote backup capabilities using WAN links. Since the cost of WAN bandwidth can be high, customers can use Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances at the remote locations and the central site to accelerate data transfers, improving storage replication time by up to 98 percent. This improvement makes replication over the WAN more cost effective—and time effective—so organisations can centralise their IT services and affordably enable disaster recovery.

“Many organisations are looking to improve their IT operations and save money by consolidating storage and servers, but the expense of WAN links can be a sticking point,” said Kevin Wittmer, director of product marketing at EqualLogic. “The combined offering of our all-inclusive iSCSI SANs and the Steelhead appliances reduces replication time and makes enabling replication for disaster recovery feasible for a much broader set of businesses and remote offices.”