Certeon Adds Backup Acceleration To Its Virtualized Acceleration Lineup

Application acceleration vendor Certeon has added aCelera Sync to its line of application acceleration products, specifically targeting data center synchronization and remote branch backup solutions. Designed for point-to-point links, Certeon is leveraging their virtualized acceleration tools to lower recovery time and recovery point objectives.

Certeon's aCelera line is a software-based WAN acceleration solution. Focusing on synchronous acceleration, aCelera relies on either virtual machines running under VMWare or Microsoft's Hyper-V, or end-user clients on the WAN link to optimize traffic. Certeon claims a 40% cost reduction over their competitor's hardware based WAN accelerators, although this claim very likely factors in a pre-existing, virtualized server infrastructure.

aCelera Sync focuses exclusively on optimizing the WAN connection between an enterprise's data center and a remote backup site. At its core, aCelera Sync shares most of its code based with the rest of the aCelera line, with some subtle but important changes. aCelera Sync does not use the same single instance database shared by the rest of the aCelera products, but instead relies on its own database to keep the two data centers in sync. The pricing model for aCelera Sync is also different, based on the data being transferred instead of the per-seat pricing of its siblings.

The merits of a software-based WAN acceleration product are compelling. In the case of aCelera Sync, its virtual machines can be spun up during backup windows, then shut down when completed, minimizing the system resources the product needs. Furthermore, the product lives on commodity server hardware, making any necessary performance upgrades a relatively painless proposition compared to upgrading a dedicated hardware appliance. Going with a virtual appliance, however, still requires physical servers running at both ends of the WAN link, which could negate some of the cost benefits of the aCelera solution. For enterprises that have made the commitment to a virtualized environment, Certeon could be an attractive solution to their WAN acceleration needs.