Waas appliance and manager setup

Question

Hi all
we have waas in my new company, we use wccp on the router.
Can anyone explain simply how my traffic will be optimized? will my waas appliance not be an inline appliance, does the traffic flow to the appliance then back to the router? how will the physical connections and traffic flow look? and how does the wccp work ?
hope someone can help
cheers
Carl

Answer 1

hi Carl,
WAAS and WCCP work as follows,
the idea is that we should configure WCCP on the router and the WAAS appliance first take care of that analisys before addressing the traffic from your clients.
things to keep in mind when configuring WCCP:
- will the WAAS device be L2 connected to the Router or there will be devices in between the two of them? ( L3 connected)  this is very important to understand what type of WCCP design works the best on your network.
for example if I had a swith directly connected to my WAAS box I will definelty use WCCP L2 redirection which incurs in less CPU utilization.
if I had a Router directly connected to the WAAS box I will be probably force to use WCCP software redirection which is more CPU utilization.
please review the following WCCP and WAAAS design guide:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/contnetw/ps5680/ps6870/prod_white_paper0900aecd806d976a_ps6474_Products_White_Paper.html
once WCCP desing has been address, we can start thinking on how the traffic coming from the remote site goes to the data center
based  on a simple  design where you have a Remote WAAS box at the  remote location and you  also  have a Core WAAS appliance at the Data  Center it goes like this:
remote clients > Remote Router>     cloud     < Core Router <   Core Servers
                            WAAS                                   WAAS
1- it does not matter if you have WCCP and an inline mode on each site of your network, you can use either one or even PBR but I see it more difficult to manage  than WCCP or inline mode.
2- there is what we called " WAAS 3 way handshake"  basically what it means is that WAAS needs to know that there is another WAAS appliance at the other site of the network and vicersa.
3- how does the WAAS handshake works, that is where your traffic comes into play
3a
remote client is trying to access his email, let's suppose that all your email exchange servers are at the Data Center on the other site of the client's network.
so that initial request comes from the remote client to Remote Router, WCCP will redirect the traffic coming from the "LAN" interface to the WAAS remote appliance , WAAS will just add a "Hello field" to the client email request.
then WCCP/WAAS remote appliance will just return the traffic back to the router and  the router send it out to his "WAN" interface
3b
once the packet cross the cloud and gets to the Data Center the same way the Core Router will redirect the remote client request to the WAAS appliance ( as I said either inline or WCCP) and then WAAS will know that there is another  WAAS appliance at the other site.
at the core site is the same way WAAS will return the traffic back to the router and then the final destination the email server.
once the traffic comes back it should follow the same path ( no asynchronous paths!!!) and that is how WAAS starts adding optimization to your traffic.
this is explain on my own words and I hope I can address some of your doubst let me know if you have any specific questions.
good luck!