How Does WAN Acceleration Speed Up Cloud Storage?

How Does WAN Acceleration Speed Up Cloud Storage?

By Maxwell Pierce

Storing data in the cloud has its appeal (it's relatively cheap, data is readily available yet secure, and business continuity is assured); however, it also has its downside (it's often excessively slow). Though cloud storage is described as being "in the cloud," the reality of cloud computing is this: data must travel long distances using a complex system of wires, cables, servers, and data centers controlled by a myriad of carriers before ultimately arriving at the cloud service provider's data center where it physically resides on actual hard disk arrays. From there, copies of that data travel to the service provider's system data centers where it is "mirrored" should a disruption or catastrophe occur. All of this takes place relatively quickly, but it can have a noticeable impact on performance.

WAN acceleration can speed up cloud storage by creating a direct pipeline between your data center and your cloud service provider's data center. Instead of sending your data on a complex journey around the world using the public Internet, WAN acceleration takes it from point A to point B using a private, optimized network.

While various WAN optimization services exist with their own proprietary technologies, they share similar goals. The goals of WAN acceleration are to:

- Optimize existing bandwidth

- Improve efficiencies

- Improve response times

- Reduce data transfers when possible

- Accelerate Web applications and email

Though accelerating cloud storage isn't generally one of WAN acceleration's most-sought after objectives, optimizing the WAN can also improve the performance of cloud storage. Here are the basics of how WAN acceleration works to speed cloud storage:

- WAN optimization techniques are used to compress, accelerate, and secure application traffic

- Duplicate and repetitive data is removed

- A private "pipeline" is established to route data from the WAN to the cloud storage data center

In order to create a private pipeline to transfer data to the cloud, you'll need to use a WAN accelerator or WAN as a Service (WaaS). These tools allow you to bypass the public Internet which is controlled by a mishmash of entities and prone to bandwidth and network traffic issues. Since various entities are involved, solving these issues is problematic and generally outside of your control. By moving to a private network, the entire pipeline is under the provider's control. Not only is it actively managed for performance, all service issues can promptly be identified, mitigated, and resolved without having to rely on an external or unknown entity to intervene. ?

WAN acceleration brings with it numerous benefits including: increased application performance, fewer bandwidth issues, and faster cloud storage. As a result, your entire team can work with both applications and data more efficiently. Whether accessing stored data or sending files to the "cloud," having a dedicated pipeline makes operations a snap with minimal latency. While optimizing a WAN has traditionally required a team of skilled network administrators, WAN as a Service providers make it possible for businesses of all sizes to take advantage of accelerated WANs and faster cloud storage without a huge investment in technology or people.

About the Author : Maxwell Pierce is a WAN Optimization specialist. In this article, he addresses the importance ofWAN accelerators in the distributed enterprise.

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