Trilight Zone

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Application delivery networking provider F5 and data protection company Double-Take Software are teaming up with the aim of giving companies more accelerated data replication and reduced WAN expenses.


Double-Take will join F5's Technology Alliance Partner Program, and the pair will combine their technologies in the F5 WANJet, an appliance that uses advanced TCP optimization and compression algorithms to increase the amount of data that can be transmitted over a connection.

Delivering LAN-like application performance over the WAN, the appliance is geared toward accelerating applications such as e-mail, client-server programs, and file transfer software.

The Double-Take product brings data protection, centralized backup, high availability and recoverability into the appliance.

"Continuous data replication using Double-Take's asynchronous, byte-level replication technology will present an efficient way to protect data across great distances," said Bob Roudebush, director of solutions engineering at Double-Take.


He added that there will be minimal impact to bandwidth and that the combination of this replication with WANJet's TCP optimization will allow customers to protect larger amounts of data over their existing infrastructure without investing in additional network capacity.

The blended product will speed data protection and recovery of applications over the WAN, according to the companies, and result in more strict recovery point and recovery time objectives.

WANJet appliances with Double-Take can address data from a number of applications, including Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, and Oracle.

The partnership was a natural fit, said Charlie Cano, solutions architect at F5. Double-Take is adept at doing "the dirty work" of addressing different protocols and dealing with Exchange servers, but it's not an expert in acceleration, Cano said.

"We go well together, and the overall aim is to achieve shorter recovery times," he noted. "For many organizations, the questions come down to how long it would take to get back online if there's a disaster on one site, and how much data you've lost in that space of time."

Even a lag of five to 10 minutes could have significant impact at companies that are continuously creating data and shuttling it to different offices or customers, he noted.

Also notable is the potential for reduced WAN expenses. Enterprise IT departments constantly grapple with the balance between ensuring business continuity while still keeping costs under control, added Cano. Since the WANJet reduces recovery times and leverages existing infrastructure, savings can be realized by lowering support costs and eliminating the need for expanding network capacity.