About the Author

Joe Harris, CCIE No. 6200 (R&S, Security & SP) is a Systems Engineer with Cisco Systems® specializing in Security. In addition to authoring Cisco Network Security Little Black Book, Joe has also been a technical reviewer for several Cisco Press publications and written articles, white papers, and presentations on various security technologies. He also assists various Certification Partners by beta testing their newest CCIE certification workbooks and has been recognized by Cisco as an SE Wall of Fame award winner.

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Announcing Cisco WAAS v4.0.19 for Storage Data Replication Market

June 17th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

Filed Under: General

This release extends Cisco WAAS to offer solution for the Storage Data replication market in DC to DC deployments with a dedicated replication accelerator (RA) mode. A wide range of network and storage network integrations are supported through native IP, Fiber Chanel over IP (FCIP), inline and WCCPv2. WAAS replication accelerator provides the following key benefits:

• Complete data center storage replication jobs into existing or shorter replication windows (upto 9 times reduction reported)
• Maximize investment in WAN bandwidth for data center storage replication
• Meet more stringent recovery point objectives (RPO) at a lower cost
• Extend the distance between disaster recovery sites

WAAS RA is specifically optimized for high volume replication applications over WAN links with at least 20Mbps throughput and 20ms latency. WAAS RA is forward compatible with version 4.1 Central Manager to allow Application Accelerator and Replication Accelerator mode WAEs managed centrally.

WAAS v4.0.19 also has features for Common Criteria certification and over 100 bug fixes for issues reported from prior WAAS releases.

Here are the links to relevant software and documentation:

Software Image:< http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/tablebuild.pl/waas40

Release Notes: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/app_ntwk_services/waas/waas/v4019/release/notes/ws4019rn.html

There Are 3 Responses So Far. »

1. 

   Comment by Robert Clayton on 22 September 2008:

   “100 bug fixes” sounds pretty buggy. I saw the latest Gartner report on Cisco’s WAAS product. Seems like Customers who bought it are mostly sorry they did, and promises for fix and and new features are not being kept. Are there other products out there besides Cisco WAAS that can be used more reliably to optimize WAN and Data Replication traffic? I ask because although I thin k Cisco’s routers and switches and perhaps even their security products are great, WAAS seems like something Cisco has had out for years now, but it is very faulty, hard to use, and just downright unreliable. There must be something better out there.
2. 

   Comment by George Murage on 25 September 2008:

   i saw highlights of the Gartner report and i have to say that i think its agruments against Cisco WAAS are not realistic nor representative of the feelings of the Cisco WAAS user population. Cisco has responded to the report and i think it is well worth it to read it. i mostly don’t agree with what Gartner says. We have a client with about 140+ WAAS boxes in 4 countries with a mix of WAN technologies who achieves 87-90% WAN optimization. The client evaluated all the vendors Riverbed, Bluecoat and Juniper and choose Cisco. The project included displacing a couple of Juniper WANopt boxes that had already been installed. So i would advise you do your own PoC, and then make an informed decision and not just go with what Gartner says…
3. 

   Comment by Joakim on 3 October 2008:

   I have looked through what documentation i have found on the WAAS solution. According to this documentation it supports vlan trunks. But what im wondering if its possible to use the same ip ranges (multi vrf enviroment) on this trunk.
   The intended area of use in a provider enviroment with multiple instances of RFC1918 addresses.

   Do you have any insight into this?

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