SilverPeak Sets Sights on Midsized Data Centers

The app-acceleration startup follows its previous WAFS appliance, designed for large data centers, with a smaller offering and a global management system.

Application acceleration startup Silver Peak Systems on May 22 made a play for space in medium-sized data centers with the release of its second appliance and a new global management system.

The Mountain View, Calif., companys new NX-5500 appliance supports a WAN capacity of 50M bps (megabits per second) and two terabytes of locally encrypted memory.

Silver Peaks previous offering, an appliance designed for larger data centers, supports OC-3 155M-bps data rates.

The NX-5500 implements Silver Peaks unique Network Memory technology, which stores data at the byte level and employs pattern-matching algorithms to recognize previously requested data. Data is localized so that only changes are transmitted between locations.

Resource Library:

Click here to read about application-acceleration platforms from Coyote Point and Citrix.

Both appliances are designed for disaster recovery and remote backup applications. To ensure high availability for disaster recovery functions, Silver Peak included RAID, redundant power and ports in the new appliance.

While the NX-5500 can support midsized data centers connected via 45M bps DS-3 (Digital Signal Level 3) links, it can also support medium-sized enterprises that are consolidating server and storage resources in a central location.

Silver Peak officials maintained that the NX-5500 can support larger application-acceleration deployments better than competitive offerings can because it can support a larger number of simultaneous TCP flows. The NX-5500 can support up to 50 remote offices linked over 1.54M-bps T-1 connections, or 100 offices with 512K-bps connections.

Read details here about Juniper Networks plans for application acceleration.

The appliances provide compression, Quality of Service and other techniques designed to reduce the "chattiness" of TCP protocols. They also support applications that use User Datagram Protocols.

The NX-5500 is available now for $44,995.

The new Global Management System, also an appliance, streamlines the deployment and ongoing management of multiple application acceleration appliances. It includes a graphical interface for configuring remote appliances and provides real-time monitoring, performance reporting and asset management. Wizards help users through the installation process.

Working with the system, users input the IP addresses of appliances being deployed and then the appliance "does all the setup," said Craig Stouffer, vice president of worldwide marketing for Silver Peak in Mountain View. "You can specify which [of the] devices is a hub for pushing out images to other devices," he added.

The GMS is available now for $9,995.

Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, views and analysis on servers, switches and networking protocols for the enterprise and small businesses.

Reader Comments: SilverPeak Sets Sights on Midsized Data Centers >>> Be the FIRST to comment on this article!

>>> More IT Infrastructure Articles          >>> More By Paula Musich