The Resilient WAN. *Please visit polls in the ILTA Mobile App or

Transcription

1 The Resilient WAN *Please visit polls in the ILTA Mobile App or

2 The Resilient WAN: Session Overview Introductions Brief discussion of WAN terminology and acronyms What does it mean to be Resilient Two Case Studies: WAN Upgrades - Before and After Small-midsized firm: Zuckerman Spaeder Midsized to large firm: Lathrop & Gage Wrap-up & Questions

3 Presenters Philip Finnerty CIO, Zuckerman Spaeder David Alberico Network Manager, Lathrop & Gage Tim Soto IT Infrastructure Manager, Lathrop & Gage Moderator: Charlie Wise IT Director, Manion Gaynor & Manning

4 Poll Results

5 What acronyms will you use today? (layman s explanations) BGP Border Gateway Protocol Protocol used on exterior Internet gateways for routing EIGRP Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol Protocol used in internal systems for routing N+1 or N+2 The number you need plus the number of extras QoS Quality of Service Allows you to tag some traffic as a higher priority WAN Wide Area Network Last Mile Carrier/Local Loop Physical connection between the customer premises (demarcation point ) and the edge of the carrier 's network POP/Layer 2 Route Path The path data traverses across the physical network; can include diverse carrier networks.

6 Elements of a WAN (Traffic analogy oversimplified) WAN Wide Area Network Highway that allows data to go from office to office Bandwidth Number of lanes on the highway available for data Capacity or congestion Amount of traffic at any given moment in time using the lanes QoS HOV or Express lanes; Prioritized traffic Latency The time it takes to travel from point A to point B Speed Better definition a function or all the above Speed Limit--(theoretically, the max is the speed of light) NOTE: WAN Acceleration/Optimization can change all of the above

7 What do you mean by Resilient? Resilient The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and retain the same essential functions, structure, identity, and user experience vs Redundant The provisioning of additional or duplicate circuits, hardware, etc., that function in case a part of the system fails. You can achieve resiliency by employing redundancy; however, redundant systems are not necessarily resilient.

8 What is your tolerance for downtime? What applications are running on your WAN (VoIP, video, VDI)? WAN Resiliency is like Enlightenment: there are no right answers, only questions. What is your budget? How much complexity can you manage? Any special security requirements? What are your anticipated future needs? What carriers are in your area? Speed costs money; how fast does it need to be (throughput, bandwidth, latency)? Where are your locations? Is data centralized or distributed?

9 Can you give me an example of a smaller firm? 100 attorneys/200 users total 8 people in IT 4 offices Washington, DC Baltimore, MD New York, NY Tampa, FA Vendor Shout Outs (Who helped) ARG Design, carrier selection, contract/price negotiation, and project management of installation CDW/Cisco Design and hardware selection

10 What were the issues Zuckerman faced? Frequent complaints of slowness from remote offices (confirmed by SolarWind high ping times) Project to move production environment to a new CoLo facility and move DR/offsite backup to home office Circuit Renewal Aging Firewalls that needed to be replaced/upgraded in near future Aging WAAS equipment Long term plans for VDI and video to the desktop Long term plan to improve security monitoring (possibly as managed service)

11 Connectivity Before Internet 25Mbps HA PAIR DC 6Mbps NY 100Mbps Internet 1024Mbps Carrier 2 DR 20Mbps Carrier 1 6Mbps BA 3Mbps Internet Internet = s Firewall (6) = s WAN Acceleration (4) 6Mbps TA 100Mbps Internet = s Production environment = s DR and offsite Backup

12 Goals for new Resilient WAN? Improve user experience (perception of performance) faster vs. the absence of slowness Seamless failover Increase Bandwidth Big pipes beats better management Reduce total cost of ownership Monthly recurring fees for circuits Maintenance on equipment Reduce equipment footprint/retire aging equipment Increase security Reduce points of entry Reduce time spent managing firewalls

13 100Mbps 1024Mbps 100Mbps Connectivity After 40Mbps DC 1024Mbps 3072 Mbps ZAYO NY BA 30Mbps 30Mbps 1024Mbps TW Telecom CoLo 30Mbps 1024Mbps Backup Internet BGP Internet TA = s Firewall = s Production environment = s DR and offsite Backup

14 Connectivity Today

15 Any regrets or lessons learned? Cisco and GNS3 has a great simulation tools that will allow you to design, test and export Survey fiber runs from building s point of entry to your suites prior to ordering. 1 gig and 10 gig capabilities are nice, but spendy Sometimes the carriers are smarter than you BGP challenges with 1 carrier Installation of circuits will take longer than you think negotiate billing delays until all circuits are up

16 Can you give me an example of a larger firm? 380 attorneys/680 users total 16 people in IT 10 offices Vendor Shout Outs (Who helped) Strategic Telecom Partners Circuit Specs and consulting Riverbed Path Selection Engineering Dell Compellent / Live-Volume CDW / Cisco Hardware Selection and hardware sales

17 What were the issues Lathrop faced? DR Data Center was Cold and a plane flight away Expensive Point to Point replication circuit MPLS Circuit refresh Primary MPLS Circuits were maxed out while passive sat empty 180 second SLA for primary MPLS Circuit outage Egress QoS, phone quality, Video Conference Quality Long Term Plans for Proven DR/BC Long Term Plans for Centralized SIP trunking Centralized Data Governance Single Points of Failure

18 Issues Lathrop faced.continued Failure Scenarios Environmental Primary DataCenter Down Failover or bring primary DC back up? If you failover can you fail back? Host Primary MPLS down 180 second failover for all regional offices Secondary MPLS performance only for all regional offices MPLS Cloud / BGP issue exposed At mercy of Provider Routing

19 Primary DataCenter Primary Data Path Regional Office DR DataCenter Cold

20 Failed Cloud with BGP established

21 Primary DC DR DC

22 Goals for new Resilient WAN? Improve User experience Rock solid Voice and Video quality Seamless Failover for multiple failure scenarios Cost efficiency More Bandwidth Primary MPLS bandwidth DataCenter to DataCenter Present Secondary MPLS as aggregate with failover More WAN Optimization Disaster recovery / Business Continuity Active/Active DataCenter Seamless Production Migration

23 Compellent Live-Volume Technology

24 Compellent Live-Volume Technology Used to meet our Disaster recovery / Business Continuity Goals Active/Active DataCenter Seamless Production Migration Live-Volume technology is similar to EMC vplex, NetApp MetroCluster, or HDS solutions. The main concept is that it allows for a LUN to be presented to hosts in both datacenters SIMULTANEOUSLY. This allows for vmotion between physical datacenters. This capability creates a paradigm shift from DR (Disaster Recovery) to DA (Disaster Avoidance) With our Diverse 10Gb WAN ring, this technology helps make our two datacenters look like a single datacenter to our users and upper layer applications.

25 Synchronous / Asynchronous Replication 10 Gig iscsi

26 Lathrop s Resilient WAN

27 Active/Active Regional Office

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31 Any regrets or lessons learned? GNS3 Network simulator was a critical tool, real IOS, Labs with YouTube how to videos Verify your Provider s bandwidth Link Serialization (Data to Wire speeds) Make sure your QoS settings are correct and negotiated with your provider Shoot for 100% WAN optimization (it makes a BIG difference) Your SNMP 5 minutes average is full of LIES Research what is the best solution for YOUR environment, because it may or may not be what vendors/consultants will try to sell you. (IE OTV functionality without OTV). Use a design framework (Zachman).

32 From the considerations you mentioned earlier, what were your top 5 priorities? Zuckerman Spaeder 1. Security 2. User Experience 3. Cost of circuits (monthly recurring) 4. Cost of other hardware & maintenance 5. Tolerance for outages or interruptions Lathrop & Gage 1. DR/BC N+1 construction 2. Bandwidth / QoS 3. Seamless Fail-over; Disaster Avoidance 4. Cost / Utilizing passive circuits/equipment 5. Better Reporting / Avoiding problems beyond our control

33 Questions We ll now open it up for questions

34 Thank You