Waas for DC-DR

Can Waas be used to optimise storage traffic (FC) ?
Requirement is to have a synchronous storage replication between two data centres within a city. the latency would be less than 5ms between the centres. would there be a real benefit with Waas at such low latency high speed links ??
Ambi

Hi Ambi,
In WAAS 4.0, there is the "Replication Accelerator" mode that is targeted to do what you want to achieve.
Unfortunately, it is designed to work on WAN links with a latency of 20ms or above so I'm not sure you will get much benefit from a WAAS solution in this case.
More info: Cisco Wide Area Application Services Software Replication Accelerator
Regards,
Nicolas

Similar Messages

WAAS for Video Streaming Video Improvments?

Hello everyone,
the scenario is streaming a live video feed from a remote location with cable Internet 50Mbps down and 10Mbps up. Since the cable connection is utilizing the public Internet we want to do whatever we can to make the video stream as consistent as possible. We want to deliver 1 video stream at 1080p. Can WAAS help out in that scenario or is there a better way to go? We will be using an H.264 vBrick encoder (that can change as well if there is a better way to go)
Thanks in advance. All replies rated.

WAAS cannot accelerate any real time or compressed traffic.
You just need solid bandwidth for that.

Can you use WAEs for conns going over IPSEC?

Question: Can you place WAEs and optimize traffic and then place over IPSEC? Has anyone done this and have you experienced sufficient optimization? I'm picturing some in-line module WAEs between enddevices and IPSEC routers and wanted to know if I could expect typical optimization performance.
Thanks! Mike.

Mike,
Are planning to deploying the WAE's in the traffic prior before/after IPSec encryption occurs? If so, you should be fine.
Zach

Where May I get WAAS OS 4.2.1 for Central Manager?

I am not seeing ANY WAAS software in Feature Navigator.

Hi James,
There is no specific image for Central manager. You can select the mode when you install WAAS for the first time --> whether you want it to act as central manager or application acceleration. You can select any of the universal images. Universal images can be used for Application accelerator or Central Manager but Accelerator images can only be used for application accelerator.
Further details about various WAAS images on CCO can be found here:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/app_ntwk_services/waas/waas/v443/release/notes/ws443xrn.html#wp90088
You can download the WAAS images under Cisco --> Support --> Downloads --> Browse all categories --> Products --> Application Networking Services --> WAAS --> WAAS software.
Regards.
PS: Please mark this as Answered, if this answers your question.

Branch IPSEC VPN Site with WCCP setup for vWAAS - Overthinking this

OK, I have a fairly large WAAS environment so I'm kicking myself for overthinking this. I have a particular branch that has an 881 router that terminates an IPSEC connection back to my main location. I have a vWAAS at this branch site, so I'm going WCCP. I got the license upgrade to enable to the WCCP feature set. Now Im confused on the WCCP setup. There is only 1 VLAN at the branch. I have the WAAS setup to do WCCP GRE.
Question is: Would I do the redirect 61,62 on the VLAN1 internface? I think I would, but Im used to dropping the 62 on the serial interface of my MPLS. I.E.:
int vlan1
ip wccp 62 redirect in
ip wccp 61 redirect in
HERE IS THE CURRENT CONFIG
ip wccp 61 redirect-list branch-waas
ip wccp 62 redirect-list branch-waas
interface Vlan1
description Branch Data VLAN
ip address 10.22.1.1 255.255.255.0
ip nat inside
ip virtual-reassembly in
ip tcp adjust-mss 1452
crypto ipsec client ezvpn Corporate-client inside
ip access-list extended branch-waas
remark WCCP Redirect ACL
deny   tcp any any eq telnet
deny   tcp any any eq 22
permit ip any any

wccp 62 is to intercept the WAN traffic, but if you put it on the LAN side, you have to catch the traffic on its way out:
ip wccp 62 redirect out
There is no need to deny telnet and ssh, those both have policies in WAAS for passthrough. Also, I prefer to put my WAAS device on its own VLAN. However, if it is going to be on VLAN 1, your access list will need:
ip access-list extended branch-waas
remark WCCP Redirect ACL
deny   ip any host (WAAS IP)
deny   ip host (WAAS IP) any
permit ip any any
To make sure you do not loop WCCP traffic.
Just edited to change from TCP to IP in access list.

WAAS Application Requests - Process Question

Non Technical Process Question
We all have forms we have our users complete when a firewall rule or change is needed. You may even have a similiar documents for when load balancers or DNS changes are required. Does anyone have document they can share that outlines what pieces of information are needed for intergrating applications into WAAS? What about ongoing changes?
Source, destination and TCP port information is really a very small portion of the what needed to maintain a clean a defined methodolgy within the WAAS manager. Does anyone have an example or can describe how you collect the initial information to set up WAAS but how do you keep track of changes that may be needed as the application charaterics change or the server farm expands horizontally?
Thanks - Sam

Sam,
the general answer for detailed information on how to configure WAAS for certain applications is described here:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/app_ntwk_services/waas/waas/v501/configuration/guide/policy.html
In general, WAAS comes preconfigured for the most widly used applications in the industry.
In order to understand, which configuration is necessary for a new application, one needs to understand the basic options WAAS offers.
These are two options:
1) Use an Application Optimizer (AO) if you need some dedicated protocol know how. ( e.g. (e)MAPI, CIFS, SSL, HTTP, ICA, to name some)
2) Generic TCP traffic is optimized using TCP Flow Optimization (TFO), Data Redundancy Elemination (DRE) and Lempe Liv (LZ) compression.
The in terms of processes, the question is:
1) Is there a policy preconfigured for the new application?
     a) yes
          If an AO is used, does the AO need configuration? ( example: SSL AO requires certificates)
          Do we have specialities which require further fine tuning? ( Answer is mostly: no, Example: non-standard ports)
     b) no
          You define what you need for the application based on the protocol characteristics.
          If you have defined these characteristics you can choose one of the AOs, or define which of the "generic" options fit the traffic. For example, for traffic that is already compressed, it does not much benefit from LZ, so choosing only TFO and DRE. Another example is traffic that has not much of dublicate data, perhaps it does not benefit a lot from DRE, so you configure TFO only.
Does that answer your question?
Thanks,
chris

WAAS Inline Adaper and Microsoft NLB (ISA Server Array)

Hi
I would like to place a waas device with 4-port inline adapter between a MS ISA Firewall and the LAN switches. The ISA are unfortunately forming an array and using NLB which causes the switches to do unknown unicast flooding.
            / Switch A --------------- LAN0   WAN0 ------------ ISA1 ------------- Switch C ---------- Router A
LAN -- |            |                               WAAS                        Array                        |       HSRP     |
            \ Switch B --------------- LAN1   WAN1 ------------ ISA2 ------------- Switch D ---------- Router B
Will the WAAS get problems since it is seen all the traffic on both inline groups? Is this setup possible?
kind regards
Tobias

Gary,
Yes you just need to configuring your firewall to allow TCP options (specifically option 33 (0x21 in HEX)), then configure the WAEs for directed mode.
The firewall will see a TCP 3-way handshake at first so the two WAEs can auto discover each other and negotiate a UDP directed mode tunnel.
Once the auto discovery phase is complete traffic traffic sent over the WAN side of the connection will be encapsulated in the UDP 4050 tunnel (so your firewall must allow this traffic through as well).
Please see the configuration guide section on directed mode here which explains in more detail, and let me know if you have other questions.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/app_ntwk_services/waas/waas/v421/configuration/guide/network.html#wpxref53362
Cheers,
Mike

Is WAAS 5 that much better than previous versions?

I have never used Cisco WAAS for wan op (I've used BlueCoat and Silverpeak) and have heard less than complimentary comments on its ease of deployment and overall functionality. I am currently looking to replace my aging Bluecoat environment and am curious about people's opinion of 5.X.
From what I have heard it is night and day different and an overall much better better product.
What are the communities opinions? How does it stack up agianst Riverbed and the other players?

Hi Kenny,
you are asking for community opinion. Working for Cisco I can give you my perspective, I hope that counts as well ;-)
You are right about the day and night difference.
One of the reasons is the completely reworked Central Manager GUI, which is using HTML 5 now. So it can be used on iPads or similar as well. But more important is the Look and Feel and usability of version 5, which is perceived very positive from what I take away in my conversations with customers.
Perhaps the biggest addition to the portfolio is a new redirection technology, AppNav (Application Navigation).
With AppNav you can now do loadbalancing and traffic distribution to a WAAS (WAE/WAVE) cluster more easily and in fine granularity. This means, you can distribute certain networks (Branches) or applications to a certain set of WAAS appliances at ease.
What think needs to be mentioned are Cisco's partnerships with leading IT companies in order to jointly work on Application Optimizers and haveing them certified. Best example, if we are talking about the new version (so true for 4.5 as well) is The Citrix ready certification for ICA optimization.
Others inlcude e.g SAP NetWaver, and Microsoft Protocols ( CIFS/SMB /native v2, (e)MAPI, Video Streaming Server, virtual Windows Appliance on WAAS), ...
Other Highlights:
WAAS Express Version 2. You can run WAAS on your Router as an IOS Feature.
SSL scalabilty at 75.000 concurrent sessions on WAVE 8541.
Cloud solution with vWAAS (virtual WAAS).
Hope that give a first impression,
chris

REMSH unix command issues when adding rule for port 514

Has anyone experienced any issues with Unix systems when adding rules to WAAS for port 514? This is the port RCOPY uses and is not handled by WAAS by default. We created a rule for port 514 but when we implement any type of optimization (even TFO Only) we start having problems with REMSH. This is used in one of our production scripts that normally take 10 minutes to run. When we apply the rule for port 514 the time goes as high as 45 minutes.
We wrote a test script that uses just the REMSH command and with out the 514 rule works fine but with the 514 rule goes down the tubes.
Just to add a little more information, I do not see an entry under Monitor/ Connection Statistics with the servers in question when the test script is running so am not sure where to go from here. I know there is a way to do a TCP capture from the WAAS so figure that will be the next step to see what is causing the issues.
Thoughts?? Ideas?? Suggestions??

Well TAC came back with a answer. They found other people with the same issue.
"It was found that the applications always used the same source and destination TCP ports. WAAS has the first connection in a "WAIT-CLOSE" state so when the next packet comes in with the same ports it is dropped." , "A defect was opened for this issue, but has not been fixed yet."
He wanted us to do a packet capture but after finding these other tickets decided it would be a waste of time and only tell us we are having a similar issue as others.
Still waiting on a suggested work around or a patch, 4.15 is suppose to come out soon but haven't heard if it will fix the problem.
With the new information I don't think even putting 514 in pass-through will fix the issue.
I will let you know if I hear anything else.

WAAS and AutoCAD

Hi,
I have an engineering firm interested in deploying Cisco WAAS for their multiple sites and I know that they use a lot AutoCAD and Windows Terminal Services over the WAN.
Is there any design/config or other documents related to this that can clear some questions that the client might have?
Thanks,
Patrick Moubarak

Hi Patrick,
I do not have an answer for you but searching thru this forum gave me a nice link and response from one of our very talented person - Joseph Merrill.
According to him in his own words from this thread: https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2036858
Personally, I am unfamiliar with MicroSurvey CAD software, and don't recall working with any accounts where that was deployed. Of course, I am not involved with every deployment and can't say whether others watching this forum might have experience with deploying MSCAD across WAAS.
I went to their web site to see if they perhaps have posted protocol information, but didn't find anything helpful. We would need to know the protocol(s) over which MSCAD communicates (ex. CIFS, HTTP, HTTPS, proprietary TCP, etc.). We also would need to know whether the data is already compressed and/or encrypted.
Cisco TAC should be able to assist you in diagnosing the cause of the slower performance with MSCAD. They will likely ask for a good, detailed problem description, a set of packet captures that show the problem, and sysreports from the WAEs. A sysreport contains a collection of logs, configuration information, and statistics which TAC will use in conjunction with the packet captures to pinpoint where the slowness is occurring.
AFAIK, in March 2008 Autodesk changed the DWG file format for AutoCAD 2007 to make it more compact and improve performance for AutoCAD users. One of the side effects of the DWG format changes is that when users perform a complete save from within AutoCAD (as opposed to an "incremental" save), virtually every byte of the file gets changed - even if zero changes were made to the file itself. The effect of the new file format, is that in some scenarios where the default configuration of the Autodesk save is modified, the save of the file object will render the caching / optimization less effective. One of the variables of the AutoCAD application is called Incremental Save Percentage (ISP). This variable can be tuned to better benefit from WAAS optimization.
Windows Explorer shell extension allows for custom thumbnail previewers and tooltip handlers. The default file tooltip displays file title, author, subject and comments; this metadata may be read from a special NTFS stream, if the file is on an NTFS volume, or from an OLE structured storage stream, if the file is a structured storage document. All Microsoft Office documents since Office 95 make use of structured storage, so their metadata is displayable in the Windows 2000 Explorer default tooltip. File shortcuts can also store comments which are displayed as a tooltip when the mouse hovers over the shortcut.
There was a problem when AutoCAD changed its file drawing format for AutoCAD 2007 and it continued with AutoCAD 2008. Beginning with AutoCAD 2007, the application rescrambles all bits of a file on every save, even if no changes are made to the file. This neutralizes the advantages of data deduplication that most WAFS products use. Customers have the option of setting an incremental save value and set it to 50, I believe.
It also depends upon the version of Autocad. Autocad is known to add more security and improvements that have really hurt the WAN optimizations in the past.
Hope this helps.
Regards.

WAAS and "Other traffic"

Hi there,
Recently I have deployed WAAS for just one site, and I am a bit concerned as majority of the traffic falls into "Other Traffic" category. I've discovered this is just a file transfer between XP desktops and a W2003 server.
Why it's categorized as Other?
Thanks

Correct - that would be SMB traffic. Prior to 4.0.7, it should be classified as part of the File-System application. From 4.0.7 on, it is classified as part of the WAFS application.
Can you please confirm that you have classifiers that cover ports 139 and 445. If so, which application is the classifier associated with?
Zach

WAAS and Juniper Netscreen Interoperability

I've been doing a dig on historical posts relating to WAAS deployed through firewalls.
I am working on a deployment with Juniper Netscreens & ASA5520 sitting between WAE's. IP connectivity is fine. I can ssh to remote device etc. but users cannot login (XP). The login scripts calls upon CIFS etc and I suspect this is being broken through the fw's.
When I disable WAAS for this flow - it all works fine i.e. users can login and access full set of corporate resources. I suspect the firewalls but would appreciate any leads..
thanks
Ajaz

Hi Ajaz,
WAAS adds TCP Option 0x21 and increments TCP packet sequence number during TCP handshake. FW needs to be configured to allow
these changes.
On the latest PIX/ASA a new command "ip inspect waas" has been added to allow above changes by wae. You might want to check
Netscreen config guide on command to disable TCP sequence number checking.
If SSH to Servers is working fine then it might not be FW dropping packets. However to confirm it might be best to use
tcpdump/tethereal on both WAEs and to sniff the traffic on whether its being dropped along the path by the FW.
Few questions:
- Whats the version running on WAEs?
- Is it only CIFS traffic which is affected? Try disabling CIFS AO if its enabled and then test.
Hope this helps,
Best Regards,
Rahul Vavale

Cisco APPNAV Controller module on the WaaS - deployment

Hi, I am using WaaS for a long time now. With the new appnav module on the waas box, i am little confused about how to deploy. I have two WAN router connected to two firewalls in HA through L2 switches. I have two WaaS boxes in-line between the L2 switch and WAN routers and it's working so far!
Now i am upgraging the WaaS setup and i am having three 8541 WaaS box with appnav module on it and want to deploy them. What the best design deployment should i go for?
Regards

Pradyetendu,
As a Cisco partner, you have access to additional resources including some training material
Partner WAAS Community Site.
https://communities.cisco.com/community/partner/datacenter/products/waas
WAAS 5.0 Training Material
https://communities.cisco.com/docs/DOC-30438
Partners with proper certification and specialization may also engage with PDI Helpdesk.
Appnav can be deployed inline or offpath. Note that appnav interfaces do not fail open as the inline modules do. You will want to consider this in your design.
Thank You,
Dan Laden
Cisco PDI Data Center
Want to know more about how PDI can assist you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BebSCuxcQU&list=PL88EB353557455BD7
http://www.cisco.com/go/pdihelpdesk

Waas and Cat4500

Hi,
I have the Cat4500 and I'd like to use WAAS for TCP optimalization. I can use only WCCPv2 for traffic redirection. I don't know which mask I have to set. I wrote that for Cat4500 is only one mask supported.
I'm sending you the WCCP configurations of WAE and Cat4500 for WCCP. Are these configs right?
WAE:
wccp router-list 1 10.4.238.249
wccp tcp-promiscuous router-list-num 1 l2-redirect mask-assign l2-return
wccp version 2
Cat4500:
ip wccp ver 2
ip wccp 61
ip wccp 62
int vlan 1
desc âLAN networkâ
ip wccp 61 redirect in
int vlan 2
desc âWAN networkâ
ip wccp 62 redirect in
redirect exclude in - is not supported on Cat4500.
Thank you.
Roman

L2 redirection will redirect packets us Layer 2 MAC rewrite vs. Layer 3 GRE.
As sessions are redirected to the WAE, the original sessions source will be that of switch interface. Upon return the it will be converted back to original source MAC.
WCCPv2 TECHNICAL DETAILS
WCCPv2 group membership is initiated by a WAE when it transmits a WCCP2_HERE_I_AM message to each defined network device (or multicast address) in the configured router-list. This message includes details about the WAE, including IP address and service groups that the device wishes to participate in. Upon receipt of the WCCP2_HERE_I_AM message, the network device will respond with a WCCP2_I_SEE_YOU if the device meets group membership criteria (as specified by shared-secret MD5 authentication password or access-list). Upon receipt of the WCCP2_I_SEE_YOU message from the network device, the WAE must respond with another WCCP2_HERE_I_AM message with the "Receive ID" field matching that of the network device message. At this point, the WAE becomes active within the service group and usable, and the network device can begin redirecting traffic to it based on service group assignment. WCCP2_HERE_I_AM and WCCP2_I_SEE_YOU messages continue to be sent every 10 seconds as a service heartbeat. The WAE is directly queried for responsiveness after two missed heartbeats and removed from the service group if a third is missed.
WCCPv2 is designed to forward traffic to an available WAE using either layer 2 redirection or GRE tunneling (default). One of the components of the WCCP2_I_SEE_YOU message is the advertisement of supported forwarding mechanisms. If a method is not listed, it GRE tunneling is used by default. Redirection assignment is done per service group. A WAE and a network device can use different redirection mechanisms for different services. Layer 2 redirection specifies that the redirecting router will rewrite the Ethernet addresses in the Ethernet header and forward the frames to the WAE. With Layer 2 redirection, the WAE must be adjacent to the network device (attached to the same subnet). GRE tunneling specifies that a GRE tunnel will be established between the network device and the WAE, and the original frames will be encapsulated into this tunnel and delivered to the cache. With GRE redirection, layer 2 adjacency is not required (the WAE can be attached to a different subnet).
To preserve connection and data integrity, the WAE will only optimize TCP connections or protocol sessions that were redirected from the beginning of the establishment attempt. If a TCP connection or protocol session was previously established from the client to the server before redirection was enabled, the WAE would recognize this as an existing connection or session and simply return the redirected traffic back to the router without applying optimizations. This is a function of the "packet return" capability of WCCPv2. The WCCPv2 packet return capability is also negotiated per service group, per WAE, at the time of joining a service group. This is also a function of the WCCP2_HERE_I_AM and WCCP2_I_SEE_YOU messaging. In the event that messages are redirected to a cache that didn't service the initiation of the connection or session, the WAE will return the messages back to the router within a GRE tunnel for normal handling.
WCCPv2 provides load-balancing and high availability through a built-in load-balancing mechanism that distributes load amongst WAEs within a service-group. The most common method of load-balancing with WCCPv2 is enabled by use of hash tables. A hash table is a 256-bucket table that is used to define the distribution of traffic amongst applicable caches. The hash table can be built based on a number of items including source or destination IP address.

WAAS SNMP monitoring

Hi,
I'm need more information regarding entity and event SNMP traps. the guides are not really clear about what they are...
Thanks
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Hi Patrick,
These traps are associated with the ENTITY-MIB and DISMAN-EVENT-MIB MIBs. The ENTITY-MIB provides basic information about the WAAS device, such as name, description, type, etc. The only trap associated with the MIB is for an object called entConfigChange. It is described as:
"An entConfigChange notification is generated when the value of entLastChangeTime changes. It can be utilized by an NMS to trigger logical/physical entity table maintenance polls."
The DISMAN-EVENT-MIB is used by WAAS for custom SNMP triggers. You can configure custom SNMP triggers to monitor specific SNMP objects and generate a trap when a defined trigger is met (i.e. CPU utilization exceeds X over time period Y).
If you have any additional questions, please let us know.
Regards,
Zach

Waas for DC-DR

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