As the need for disaster recovery continues to move downmarket from the enterprise to medium and small businesses, the number of IT shops replicating their data to an offsite location is increasing. Array based replication was once a feature reserved for the big budgets of the Fortune 1000. Today, array based replication is a feature that is available on most midrange storage devices (and even some of the entry level products).

This increase in replication deployments has created a new challenge for IT. The most common replication solutions move the data over the IP network. That data puts a significant load on the IP network infrastructure. The LAN infrastructure is almost always up to the task, but the WAN is often not able to handle this new burden. While the prices of network infrastructure have come down over the years, big pipes are still an expensive monthly outlay. So, how do we get that data offsite without driving up those WAN costs? WAN optimization technology provides a potential solution.

Not every workload or protocol can benefit from today’s WAN optimization technology, but replication is one that usually gets a big boost. I gathered some data from a client who is using NetApp SnapMirror to replicate to a remote datacenter and deployed  WAN optimization to prevent a major WAN upgrade.

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