Best Practices in Legal IT

Best Practices in Legal IT
How to share data and protect
critical assets across the WAN
Agenda
•
Requirements for Data Center outsourcing
– Timothy Titus, Director of Managed
Network Services
•
Overcoming WAN challenges
– Damon Ennis, VP of Product
Management and Customer Support
•
An end user perspective
– Bill Costello, Director of Computer
Services
Requirements for Data Center
Outsourcing
Timothy Titus
Director of Managed Network Services
Technologies Reduce Disaster Recovery
Intervals, but at an Increasing Cost
Industry Estimated Costs
• Planning software - $10,000
for a few users to $175,000
for a web-server license for
many users
• Off-site high-capacity tape
storage - $25,000/month plus
equipment costs
• Off-site SANs – Start around
$18,000/month plus
equipment costs
• E-mail continuity systems –
Range from a low of $.17 to
$.82/user per month
• Alternative power sources
(Generators, building-wide
UPSs, etc.) – Range in price
from $50,000 to $250,000
• A Hot Site – Can cost
approximately
$20,000/month
• $100,000/year to create and
maintain a BC/DR team
LexisNexis Confidential
What are your real recovery needs?
All firms should have a BCP/DR plan that
fits their needs.
• Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point
Objective (RPO)
– Typically exponential costs to reduce both
– Usually not considered as part of backup strategy
– Everyone wants zero downtime and zero data loss
• What does your business really require?
• Prioritization
– What apps need to be back up and running first?
– In a real disaster, what will my customers expect? Tolerate?
– Most firms get a poor Return on Investment because they fail to prioritize
Keys to Success in Developing a Plan
• Firm Management Participation
– Successful Development of Plan has focused on participation across
organization.
– Top-Down Approach is best “model.”
• Determination of Business Drivers
– In conjunction with determination of RTO/RPO
– Firm’s Overall Goals Established Upfront
– Agreement of Priorities, Staging and Benefits.
Questions to Ask
•
•
•
•
•
What are the priorities?
Can we do this internally or outsource?
What are the technology options?
What is the “standard” for law firms?
What can the firm afford to invest?
Requirements
Design and Cost
Modeling
Requirements
2.
Solution Options
3.
Technology Operations
4.
Operation Plan
5.
Implementation Plan and
Schedule
Key
Deliverables
1. Detailed Planning/
Management
Checkpoint
1.
Management
Checkpoint
Key
Deliverables:
Operation and
Support
Detailed
Planning and
Implementation
:
Key
Deliverables
1. Operations
Scheduling
2.
Maintenance
2.
Technology Installation
and Testing
3.
Capacity and growth
management
3.
Applications Testing
4.
4.
Detailed Concept of
Operations
Regular Management
Reviews
5.
Regular Test of
Communications
6.
Consistent review of
RTO/RPO Targets
6.
Preliminary Cost Estimates
7.
Determination of RTO/RPO
5.
Updated Cost Estimates
8.
Communication Plan
6.
Communication Tests
Objectives of Any Plan
• Respond to layers of business interruptions
through a standardized approach.
• Maintain client service at a minimum level while
recovering and doing so in a cost-effective
manner.
• Build in automatic response and procedures so
that Life Safety can be a priority.
A Holistic Approach
• Emergency Response • Preservation of Life
• Crisis Communication
• Technology Recovery
• Business Continuity
• Reaching Employees
and Clients
• Testing &
Maintenance
• Processes to Keep
the Firm Running
What are the risks?
• Three Types of Risks to Analyze
– Catastrophic – Serious interruption in a large
area that creates a life-threatening situation
for employees.
– Localized – Event that limits access to one or
more key offices or makes work within those
offices impossible.
– Infrastructure – Outside systems are disabled
while the firm’s environment is safe.
Overcoming WAN Challenges
Speed Application Performance
between offices
Damon Ennis
Damon Ennis
VP,
Product Management
and Customer
VP of Product
Management
and Customer
Support
Support
Silver Peak Systems
Today’s IT Challenges
•Backup
•Replication
•Recovery
Ohio
NY
WAN
Application
Delivery
Remote
Backup
• Limited bandwidth
• High Latency
• Packet loss
Business Challenges:
LA
London
▲ Increasing volume of data
▲ Increasing distances between locations
▲ Tight RTO/RPO Requirements
▲ Cost and availability of bandwidth
▲ Manageability
The Need for WAN Acceleration
•
•
•
Poor WAN performance can jeopardize backup, replication and recovery
Unique branch office vs data center challenges exist
Special WAN optimization requirements on “fat pipes”
NY
London
155 Mbps
155 Mbps
WAN
Data center challenges:
• Cannot meet RPO/RTO
• Diverse application mix
• Bandwidth (cost/availability)
Branch Office challenges:
• Limited bandwidth
• High latency
• Packet loss
DS-1
SF
• Servers need to be centralized
• LAN performance expectations
• Data security issues
45 Mbps
Denver
The Evolution of WAN Acceleration
Circa 2000
Today
LZ Based Compression
Disk Based Data Reduction
▲ Dictionary Size 32 KB
▲2-3 Compression
▲“Dictionary Size” 3TB
▲10-100x Data Reduction
Low Speed Technology
High Speed, Nx64 bit HW
▲2 Mbps in, 512 kbps out
▲Software DES
▲1-2 Gbps in, 10-500 Mbps out
▲128 bit AES encryption
Compression Focused
Response time / RTO Focused
▲No Latency Mitigation
▲No Loss Mitigation
▲TCP/CIFS Acceleration
▲Forward Packet Recovery
Data Reduction Accelerates Transfers
•
•
•
•
Transparently intercept traffic flowing across the WAN
Fingerprint packet content at the byte level
Deliver duplicate data from a local instance rather than across
the network
Maintain data encrypted in transit and at rest
Address ALL WAN Limitations
Application
Acceleration
CIFS
Acceleration
L7
Bandwidth
Latency
Packet loss
Out of order packets
TCP
Acceleration
L4
QoS
L3
9
9
9
9
• B/W management
• Classification
• Queuing
Network Memory™
•Disk based data reduction
•Compression
Forward Error
Correction (FEC)
Packet Order
Correction (POC)
•Real-time packet recovery
•Real-time packet reordering
Typical Performance Improvements
HTTP Downloads
Web Applications
Database (SQL)
File Transfer (CIFS)
Email (MAPI)
Email (Notes)
Video Streaming
Replication (e.g. VVR)
Backup (e.g. Legato)
1x
Key
2x
5x
10x
20x
50x
100x 200x 500x
Typical Aggregate Performance
Peak Performance
What can WAN Optimization do
for your Law firm?
• Share knowledge management resources
between locations
• Accelerate the performance of file, email, and
document management
• Ensure fast and reliable replication, backup,
and disaster recovery across the WAN.
Case Study
•
•
Background:
–
Law firm with 5 regional offices (NY, Boston, SF, LA, D.C)
–
2 dedicated co-location facilities for Disaster Recovery (San Jose, Boston)
–
Up to 5 GBytes transferred daily between each location
–
WAN links range between 50Mbps and 155 Mbps today
–
Presently use a single MPLS provider; Plan to add redundant MPLS links
Challenge:
–
75 ms latency on cross-country links; Only getting 10% WAN bandwidth utilization
–
Poor Web (HTTP/S), email (MAPI), and CIFS file performance across WAN; poorly
performing SharePoint and SQL-based financial application
–
Stringent data replication needs between San Jose and Boston
–
Data privacy a major requirement
Case Study – (continued)
• Solution:
– Conducted test on 45 Mbps, Boston-SF link
– Chose NX-7500 for
• Ability to scale to 155 Mbps
• Only appliance with disk encryption
• TCP acceleration for latency mitigation
• Results:
– 10-20x average improvement
– 21x improvement for data replication
– Latency sensitive financial application (SQL)
delivered with LAN-like performance
– Over 80% data reduction on average
Why Silver Peak?
• Scalability - the best performance on Fat Pipes
– Highest bandwidth – 500 Mbps
– Largest data store – 7 Terabytes
– Greatest flow count – 256,000 flows
• More applications supported
– Data reduction on all applications (TCP and UDP)
– Lowest Latency (real-time and interactive applications)
• End-to-end security
– Line rate encryption - at rest (AES)
– Line rate encryption - in flight (IPsec)
Silver Peak Systems provides “the best current offering”
July 2007
among WAN optimization appliances –
An End User Perspective
Bill Costello,
Director of Computer Services
Who is Arnold & Porter LLP?
• An international law firm of approximately 600 attorneys
(founded in 1946)
• Offices in Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia, New York,
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, London, and
Brussels.
• Maintains more than 25 practice areas including litigation,
transactional matters, and regulatory issues.
Network Diagram
45
(D M
S3 b p
) s
London
Brussels
Data Center
(LexisNexis OH)
New York, NY
AT&T MPLS
WAN
45 Mbps
(DS3)
McLean, VA
Washington, DC
HQ and Data Center
Denver, CO
San Francisco, CA
Los Angeles, CA
Washington, DC
(Market Square)
Washington, DC
(Tenleytown)
The Challenge
• Application latency
– Slow email performance in Brussels (email stored in London)
– Improve iManage DMS, Lotus Notes, CIFS (directory browsing)
performance across the WAN
• Server consolidation effort
– Bring all servers and storage into main data centers; cannot do
without WAN optimization
• Improve the performance of host based replication
performance.
– Could move the data, just not fast enough between Washington
DC and LexisNexis DC in Ohio despite 200Mb point to point.
Finding the Right Solution
•
Scalability a big requirement
– Big WAN links coming into Data Centers (45 Mbps MPLS + 200 Mbps fiber)
•
Must support a variety of applications
– File, email, document management + VoIP and SQL
•
Two primary WAN optimization vendors evaluated
– Tested on live link in Washington DC area
•
Ultimately selected Silver Peak’s NX appliances
–
–
–
–
–
Studies indicated best performance on DS-3 and 200 Mbps links
Ability to reduce packet loss on MPLS and IP VPNs
VoIP and UDP support
Disk encryption without performance issues
Bi-directional caching
Sample Results – Primary
Applications
Overall Bandwidth Improvement
Additional Considerations
• Carefully plan using the SP deployment guide.
– Know network and routing configuration
– Identify any potential bottlenecks
• Don’t forget to baseline
– Easier to prove an ROI when you have a starting
point
• Don’t underestimate the value of good support
– Work with reliable integrator and vendors
Q&A
Requirements for Data Center outsourcing
Timothy Titus, Director of Managed Network
Services
Overcoming WAN challenges
Damon Ennis, VP of Product Management and
Customer Support
An end user perspective
Bill Costello, Director of Computer Services