Blue Coat ProxySG Virtual Appliance

Overview:

Blue Coat’s ProxySG Virtual Appliance is a software version of the ProxySG Acceleration Edition. A critical component of Blue Coat’s Application Delivery Network solution, ProxySG VA provides WAN Optimization on industry standard servers for branch offices. Blue Coat ProxySG Virtual Appliance reduces bandwidth and accelerates application performance, enabling innovative branch office consolidation.

Leverage Virtualization to Consolidate and Optimize

Virtualization technologies now enable you to take advantage of more powerful server hardware and build high availability, flexible branch office platforms for a fraction of the costs of traditional solutions.

The power and cost efficiencies of servers.
Quad-core processors with multi processor options, expanded memory and high density disk drives make industry standard servers the best value for branch office platforms - 2-10x capacity and value versus routers and proprietary platforms.

Virtualization enables consolidation and high availability at branch.
VMware virtualization technologies, proven in the most demanding data center environments, now push into branch offices. This enables you to consolidate different types of applications and create high availability platforms where hypervisors manage the hardware. And VMware virtualization isolates the system from potential instability of leading operating systems, enabling high availability flow processing technologies to maintain operation in a mixed environment.

Flexible, open platforms let you adapt to business needs.
x86 servers can run any business application you need in the branch, including the leading Microsoft Windows Server 2008 for key services like DNS, DHCP, Print and Authentication. Whether applications run on top of Microsoft or other OS’s, virtualization provides the flexibility to consolidate to a single server.

Accelerate application delivery with Blue Coat WAN Optimization.
With growth in required bandwidth and requirements for high performance business applications, more organizations are turning to Blue Coat WAN Optimization to dramatically reduce WAN bandwidth and accelerate application performance for branch offices.

Deliver more efficient consolidation and operational innovation to branch offices

Blue Coat’s acceleration technologies are available today as the ProxySG VA on industry-standard servers. With our virtual appliance, you get all the benefits of WAN Optimization as well as the ability to consolidate with other branch-office applications and IT services.

Features & Benefits:

Benefits

Accelerate performance of applications and reduce WAN Costs.
From files, email and backup to video and Web applications delivered internally or as software-as-a-service (SaaS), Blue Coat WAN Optimization speeds delivery of business applications and dramatically reduces bandwidth required.

Reduce costs via consolidation while delivering local applications and Microsoft Server 2008 Services.
By reducing the number of servers via consolidation, and eliminating backup systems by enabling centralization of storage and backup, Blue Coat helps you drastically reduce the operating and capital costs for rich branch office infrastructure.

Maintain flexibility to adapt to business with virtualized, open server platform.
Powerful x86 multi core server systems with excess capacity combine with virtualization to enable you to deploy almost any business application or service at a branch – when you need. This allows you to adapt to changing requirements in our complex technology world.

Blue Coat’s Leading WAN Optimization

Blue Coat accelerates the broadest range of applications – from files, email and backup to video and Web applications delivered internally or as software-as-a-service (SaaS). By applying the right mix of our acceleration capabilities, you can improve application performance for all types of applications, reducing required WAN bandwidth to remote offices and speeding the end user experience.

Blue Coat ProxySG specifically helps reduce WAN congestion and accelerate application performance by combining protocol optimization, object and byte caching, compression, bandwidth management and video optimization that can save up to 99% of your bandwidth. As a result, Blue Coat helps you realize significant application performance gains and a superior ROI. Here’s how our WAN Optimization technologies do it:

• Protocol optimization: Improves application performance over the WAN by reducing the effects of latency on inefficient protocols or applications originally architected for the LAN.
• Object caching: Dramatically accelerates Web applications and workflows that depend on centrally stored files by delivering remote content locally.
• Byte caching: Reduces bandwidth consumption for repetitive data elements transmitted over the WAN, even across disparate applications.
• Compression: Reduces the effect of latency for any compressible data traversing the WAN.
• Bandwidth management: Prioritizes enterprise-critical application delivery over the WAN.
• Video caching and live streamsplitting: Save bandwidth by downloading a single live stream once and distribute it to multiple users. You can also pre-populate and cache video for on-demand use in native protocol.

Average application acceleration increase with ProxySG

Models, Capacity and Minimum Server Requirements:

Blue Coat ProxySG Virtual Appliance requires VMware ESX or ESXi Server v3.5 (update 3 or 4) or v4.0 and server hardware that is compatible with those VMware versions and meet the minimum specifications.

Server requirements for the Virtual Appliance ALONE are as follows:

*2.93 GHz Nahalem Processors are equivalent for this spec

• Servers must meet minimum required specifications and:
  • Be compatible with VMware ESX/ESXi v 3.5 or 4.0
  • Assume additional 10-20% overhead to these specs for VMware
  • Additional VMs require separate capacity planning
• Disk specs assume no RAID
  • Additional RAID configs available (RAID 0 recommended)

Estimated server requirements when including Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Core

*includes capacity for Windows Server 2008 R2

Note: All models require VMware ESX or ESXi Server v3.5 (update 3 or 4) or v4.0. To assure hardware compatibility, see http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php

Documentation:

Download the Blue Coat ProxySG Virtual Appliance Datasheet (PDF).