Consolidating Remote

Servers and Storage for

Security, Efficiency
VIRTUAL
SERVERS
PROJECTED
FROM THE
DATA CENTER
TO THE EDGE
BOOST AGILITY,
REDUCE RISK,
AND INCREASE
CONTROL.

// 1

Many organizations have invested in server consolidation, particularly

in their data centers. In remote offices, though, servers and storage
exist as isolated islands of infrastructure that require management
through separate operational processes and procedures. This approach
could place data at risk. A new kind of storage architecture allows IT to
consolidate remote servers and data in the data center by decoupling
storage from its server over any distanceeven thousands of miles
and still get the same performance as if the storage remained local to
the branch. Organizations can now consolidate remote infrastructure to
increase security and efficiency, without adversely impacting end-user
performance in branch offices.

//// CONSOLIDATING REMOTE SERVERS AND STORAGE FOR SECURITY, EFFICIENCY

/// E
 XTENDING VIRTUALIZATION TO
BRANCH OFFICES

away from the closest major city and is reliant on

diesel generators for power.

Computerworlds State of the Enterprise

2013 survey of more than 300 IT and business

These locations are remote, bandwidth is limited,

management executives finds that virtualization

and the costs of links into some of these countries

ranks on top along with security as an area for

is very cost prohibitive, says Rohit Tellis, director

increased investment. Theres no denying the

of IT for Alamos Gold at its Toronto headquarters.

impact of virtualization on the data center.

Geological applications generate huge data files

Server virtualization penetration is estimated to be

written locally in the mines. The companys WAN

about 50 percent, according to several market

was unable to allow for effective storage replication

research firms.

back to its Toronto data center, therefore map data

from Turkey was saved on hard drives and sent

Large companies in particular have been

back via mail to Toronto. This resulted in a lag time

expanding branch offices during the past few

of several days before data collected in the field

years, yet server virtualization at the network

was able to be stored in the central data center.

edge significantly trails that in the data center,

Adding to the challenge was the lack of local

according to IDC. Branch and remote locations

skilled expertise and the difficulty of transporting

are ripe for adoption of virtualization to take

equipment such as servers to the sites.

advantage of the operational and cost savings it

provides. The challenge remains that for many

These issues are not unique to remote mining

organizations, data stored in remote locations

sites. In a 2011 survey of 207 IT executives on

is at risk from a variety of perils ranging from

infrastructure and operations issues, Forrester

environmental disasters to political disruption to

Research notes that branch and remote offices,

locally lax standards regarding cyber security.

once bastions dedicated to sales teams with a very

narrow set of services, are turning into microcosms

Even if a remote operation is based in a relatively

of their campuses. More than 55 percent of our

stable and safe locale, it may be difficult and

survey respondents had engineering, sales, and

expensive to find nearby IT support or skills that

R&D at the remote offices.

match up with those present in the central data

operate dedicated server resources in branch

/// P
 ROJECTING VIRTUAL SERVERS TO
BRANCH LOCATIONS

offices. Local infrastructure may be lacking,

Data center server consolidation projects allow

putting power reliability and wide area network

organizations to cut costs, improve security,

performance in jeopardy.

concentrate investments, and ultimately evolve

centers. It can also be costly to maintain and

computing infrastructure to a private cloud model.

Case in point: Alamos Gold Inc. and its subsidiaries
are engaged in the acquisition, exploration,

Consolidating branch IT resources to data centers

development, and extraction of gold. It operates

has been traditionally elusive. Branch servers

late-stage development projects in Turkey and the

and applications can be migrated to data centers,

Mulatos mine in Mexico, which is about five hours

but because end users stay put, the distance

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The challenge
remains that
for many
organizations,
data stored in
remote locations
is at risk from a
variety of perils
ranging from
environmental
disasters
to political
disruption
to locally lax
standards
regarding cyber
security.

//// CONSOLIDATING REMOTE SERVERS AND STORAGE FOR SECURITY, EFFICIENCY

between them and their applications presents

a virtualization partition to host our servers, and

a challenge due to latency. In some cases, it

being able to then abstract the storage at the

is just the nature of write-intensive business

remote office and have it stored at our data center,

applications with a low tolerance for limited

says Tellis.

bandwidth, high latency, and connectivity issues

that leave organizations with no choice other than

Virtualizing edge servers that can be stored in the

to provision local server and storage resources. In

data center is a logical progression of the use of

other cases, certain services and applications are

virtualization technology, says Eric Carter, director

simply required at the edge to service the needs

of product marketing with Riverbed. The challenge

of the user population.

is enabling the delivery of the virtualized server and

data from point A in the data center to point B at

A radical innovation in block-level optimization

a remote site. Delivering block storage over great

allows data to reside in a central data center yet

distances hasnt been possible until now. This new

be available as if it were local to applications at the

capability unlocks a significantly better way for IT to

edge in remote offices. According to a 2012 report

deliver services to the edge, completely managed

from IDC, organizations can now transform their

from the data center.

data centers through consolidation, virtualization,

of the data center to branch offices where high-

/// STORAGE DELIVERYFROM THE

DATA CENTER TO THE BRANCH

performance services are delivered locally from

The Granite solution enables the virtualization of

centrally managed infrastructure.

basic local services onto a single appliance, rather

and automation: IT can extend the virtual edge

than stacking separate server and storage devices

This new technology, available in Riverbed

into a rack, as is often the case. It takes advantage

Granite appliances, enables branch virtual servers

of Riverbed Steelhead WAN optimization and

to be controlled and managed on storage centrally,

prioritization and enables centralization of servers

yet be locally executed on a stateless compute

and storage to enable completely centralized data

platform in the branch, eliminating the need to

protection and management, further lowering

deploy remote storage infrastructure.

branch IT costs.

The Alamos Gold IT team chose the Granite solution

Granite appliances enable local execution of data

to consolidate data in the data center while making

center-based servers through a highly efficient

it available to users and applications running locally

boot-over-the-WAN capability that allows IT

in remote offices. The company can now centrally

organizations to start and utilize required virtual

manage its branch IT from the data center while

servers very quickly over distance. The ability to

projecting data from Toronto to its remote Turkey

deliver branch IT from the data center enables IT

mining site.

to take full advantage of data center best practices

while gaining capabilities like instant provisioning

With Granite we are able to a get a branch-officein-a-box scenario to achieve what we need on-site
through the combination of WAN acceleration and

// 3

and restores.

A radical
innovation in
block-level
optimization
allows data to
reside in a central
data center yet
be available as
if it were local
to applications
at the edge in
remote offices.

//// CONSOLIDATING REMOTE SERVERS AND STORAGE FOR SECURITY, EFFICIENCY

IT can now rapidly recover should a remote

Explaining the implementation in the second half

location experience a disaster or catastrophic

of 2012, Tellis recalls, We had a power issue at one

outage. Moreover, the IT needs of a new office can

of our locations, which caused the appliance to go

be preconfigured in the data center and booted into

down. When Granite came back up within a short

service, says Carter. Recovery and provisioning

time our remote office had access to all its data

can now be as simple as unboxing an appliance

once again.

and plugging in the right cables. Once that is done,

everything can be started from the data center and
available in minutes.

/// R
 EALIZING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF
CONSOLIDATION
Consolidating infrastructure within the branch

With Granite, the IT organization can manage, back

and to the data center can lighten the IT footprint

up, provision, patch, expand, and protect branch

at remote locations and improve cost efficiency.

data on enterprise storage within the four walls

However, it must be done within a framework that

of the data center. According to a ZK Research

supports user performance requirements and IT

report, In the past, data centers and remote offices

control and management systems.

were managed through separate processes and

infrastructures. Granite bridges the gap between the

Alamos had little existing infrastructure at its

data center and global offices, allowing seamless

Turkey locations, so it was able to take a clean

integration between data center and distributed

slate approach with a centrally managed branch

operations. Management of the data center extends

office. Going with the Granite solution reduced the

seamlessly to globally distributed operations,

hardware requirements of the locations to just a

allowing IT to leverage investment in the data center

Steelhead EX + Granite appliance and a firewall.

of the future.

There is no longer a need for a switch, file server,

or backup software a huge advantage in an

InfoWorld, which named Granite a 2013 Technology

environment where it can be difficult to deploy

of the Year Award winner, observed, By pairing

equipment and more difficult to support it.

appliances at the edge and at the core, Granite

allows IT to project virtual machines and iSCSI

Granite appliances extend the virtual edge of the

storage volumes out to the branch office while

data center to the branch office, enabling complete

keeping the actual assets in the data center.

consolidation of edge servers and data. By

adopting this progressive approach, organizations

Alamos Gold has realized the benefit of centralizing

like Alamos can realize the best of all worlds: 100

storage for branch locations. Because the

percent consolidated data and applications, and

turnaround time for acquiring resources in a city

LAN performance at the edge over the WAN.

is so much faster compared to a distant location,

with Granite, making a changesuch as adding disk

For more information, please visit

space in the data center and presenting it at the

http://www.riverbed.com/granite/.

distant locationsis much faster and easier,

Tellis says.

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Consolidating
infrastructure
within the branch
and to the data
center can lighten
the IT footprint at
remote locations
and improve cost
efficiency.