Cisco OTV

Accelerate Any Application Over Cisco OTV with Silver Peak

Extend your data center between locations with Cisco’s Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) without sacrificing performance between locations. Silver Peak optimizes applications even when they run across the proprietary protocol. Replicate traffic between data centers by as much as 20X faster. With Silver Peak, applications and protocols can still perform their best even when extended across OTV. 

Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) is Cisco’s protocol for extending layer 2 (L2) networks across locations and is important component in datacenter interconnection (DCI). With OTV, a Cisco Nexus switch encapsulates trunked L2 virtual local area networks (VLANs) in a layer 3 (L3) transport, typically IP, which is then delivered between data centers. The protocol is based on Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunneling protocol, originally developed by Cisco, and runs natively across IP. 

While OTV allows IT to improve datacenter operations, applications operating across OTV are still susceptible to the added latency and packet loss found on site-to-site connections. Application acceleration is unable to address these problems in part because they can only accelerate TCP- or UDP-based protocols.

Silver Peak’s protocol-independent architecture optimizes OTV traffic and the applications carried within the OTV tunnel. No special configuration or software is required. More specifically, Silver Peak addresses the following performance challenges:

  • Bandwidth – Silver Peak byte-level deduplication removes redundant data from the OTV network. The first time an application running across OTV sends data, it is fingerprinted and compressed by Silver Peak. Subsequent requests are fulfilled by the local Silver Peak instance. 
  • Latency – Silver Peak mitigates latency enabling applications running across OTV to operate more efficiently over distance. TCP Acceleration includes windows scaling, selective acknowledgements, and HighSpeed TCP. CIFS Acceleration includes CIFS read-ahead, CIFS write-behind, and CIFS metadata optimizations. Latency is also reduced through packet coalescing, which re-packages multiple smaller packets into a single larger one, and through Dynamic Path Control, which selects the fastest path to a remote location.
  • Congestion – Silver Peak makes OTV and the encapsulated protocols more predictable across congested WANs. Lost packets are reconstituted in real-time at the far end of a WAN link, avoiding delays that come with multiple round-trip retransmissions. Out-of-order packets are resequenced, avoiding retransmission and processing delays that occur when packets arrive out-of-order.

Silver Peak protects OTV data in-flight between locations with an Accelerated IPSec virtual private network (VPN) running AES-256, the enterprise standard for data encryption. Data-at-rest within Silver Peak instances is also encrypted with AES. End-to-end encryption is provided by SSL/TLS.

Silver Peak offers the most scalable and cost-effective data acceleration software for connecting data centers, remote offices and the cloud. Download and deploy it yourself in just 20 minutes or contact us to see how Silver Peak can help your team.

Featured Products

  • VX WAN Optimization Software

    VX Virtual WAN Optimization Software

    Silver Peak VX WAN optimization software supports the full list of Silver Peak WAN optimization features. Use Silver Peak VX software to build a Silver Peak Unity WAN fabric for integrating your enterprise WAN, the Internet and the cloud, and to optimize every SaaS application.

  • NX WAN Optimization Appliances

    NX Appliances for Application Acceleration and Replication Acceleration

    Silver Peak NX WAN optimization appliances are the industry's highest-performance WAN optimization solutions, delivering three-times the WAN performance and capacity of the nearest competing products. Silver Peak Software for Life program means you can convert NX appliances to VX software at anytime for free.

  • Unity Architecture: Building an SD-WAN Fabric

    Silver Peak Unity is the premier solution for broadband and hybrid WANs.

Benefits

  • Avoid or delay expensive WAN bandwidth upgrades by eliminating redundant application and OTV traffic from the WAN.
  • Improve replication performance across OTV connectivity by 20X
  • Improve OTV consistency by compensating for the effects of latency and network congestion that undermine OTV performance.

Resources

  • Data Center Interconnect (DCI)  initiatives use technologies such as Cisco's Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) to extend data centers across locations. But in order for DCI to be effective, IT must address the bandwidth limitations, high rates of packet loss, and increased the delay of the WAN separating those locations. Data acceleration and WAN optimization, in particular, compensates for those challenges, enabling architects of software-defined data centers to meet DCI initiative.
  • Networks have never been more critical to the success of IT and the business. New virtualization and Cloud technologies and services are remaking the face of IT and the way in which infrastructure is architected. But the common thread throughout is the network, which must be both highly available and high performing. The tools, technologies, and practices of network monitoring and management address these needs, and are thus essential to the success of every enterprise and governmental organization.This Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) research report takes a detailed look at the current state of networks and network management, and examines five major areas of change and evolution affecting network management, including Cloud and virtualization, Software Defined Networking (SDN), big data, the rise of log data and APIs as management data sources, and the ongoing convergence of network operations teams and tools.
  • The Entertainment Company is a leading provider of entertainment, information and communications products and services in the United States. When The Entertainment Company wanted to establish a disaster recovery site, it faced a challenge all too familiar to many enterprises: How to replicate large amounts of data across the country and still meet Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs)? 
  • Citizens Business Bank's Steve Borba talked about needing to fulfill a disaster recovery initiative and how Silver Peak WAN optimization software was the logical choice for the bank's Dell and VMware infrastructure.
  • Expansion fueled by acquisitions as well as organic growth drove Donegal Insurance Group to modernize its data center. The effort, which was well along by early 2009, included server virtualization and an enterprise-class storage area network. Mike Clement, Donegal's assistant VP for information services, says the SAN helped ensure business continuity by replicating data between the Marietta, Pa.-based insurer's main data center at its headquarters and its distant disaster recovery (DR) site in Le Mars, Iowa, but bandwidth was becoming scarce.