Microsoft has released a paper titled: "Hyper-V Replica and Riverbed". The paper which contains 14 pages and details how Hyper-V replica works in conjunction with the WAN optimazation solution from Riverbed using the Steelhead appliance. Hyper-V Replica provides the ability to perform asynchronous and frequent replication of virtual machines to another server running Windows Server 2012 with the Hyper-V role installed.
The paper contains the following sections:
- Introduction
- WAN Optimization and Hyper-V Replica
- Deployment
- Test conducted and Results
- Test 1a: Initial Replication of a Sparsely Populated Virtual Machine
- Test 1b: Initial Replication with a Densely Populated Virtual Machine
- Test 1c: Initial Replication of a Single Virtual Machine with Hyper-V Replica Compression Enabled
- Test 2a: “Warm” Initial Replication and Snapshot Optimization
- Test 2b: Replication of Subsequent Changes
- Test 3: Extended Testing
Conclusion:
We found that the Steelhead appliances exceeded expectations in reducing network traffic in a variety of scenarios including initial and delta replications. The Steelhead appliances were easy to configure and Hyper-V Replica did not require any special configuration or deployment steps (for using the WAN optimizer). Over and above the built-in compression technology provided by Hyper-V Replica, the Riverbed devices were able to further optimize replication traffic. The time taken to complete and maintain replication and network traffic was reduced by up to 98% with 70% being typical for sustained and varied workloads.