Q & A

Frequently asked questions about the Reptor Accelerator Suite.

• General

  What components does the Replify Acceleration Suite contain?

  The Replify Acceleration Suite contains three components:

  1. Reptor Enterprise Manager. The Reptor Enterprise Manager fulfills the central licensing, centralized configuration and is the reporting Engine of the Replify Acceleration Suite.
  2. Reptor Virtual Appliance. The Reptor Virtual Appliance is the central or branch office accelerator. Based on the configured Application Server the Reptor Virtual Accelerator performs the acceleration of the applications.
  3. Reptor Client. The Reptor Client installed on the client intercepts the traffic initiated by the user. Based on the central configuration the client will optimize traffic for configured applications.

  All three components work together to deliver the Application Acceleration. When buying the acceleration suite all three components will be included.

• Is IPv6 supported by Replify?

  The Replify Acceleration Suite appliances are IPv6 ready, although currently the functionality is disabled.

• What application acceleration techniques are employed by the Reptor Accelerator?

  The Replify Acceleration Suite uses three techniques to accelerate application traffic. The first technique is the application optimization. For specific applications, built-in functionality reduces application latency, chattiness or port demands, including Active FTP acceleration.

  The second technique that is being used is the byte de-duplication technique X^DR. More information on this technique can be found by reading this datasheet.

  Another technique that is used is compression. This compression is a gzip-like compression to be able to reduce the data some more before it is put on the wire.

• What levels of support do Replify deliver?

  Replify has two levels of support that are delivered to customers and one level of support that is delivered to partners that have their own support facilities.

  Replify’s standard and limited support are delivered to customers and only differ in the coverage of time. Replify’s partner support is delivered to partners that are able to provide level 1 and level 2 support themselves. For more information please visit the support section of our website or send an email to sales@replify.com

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  Applications

  Which applications can be accelerated with the Replify Acceleration Suite?

  Any application that uses the TCP/IP protocol can be accelerated. The limitation is based on the individual aspects of the applications. Application-specific compression and encryption may influence the Reptor Accelerator’s performance.

• Can the Replify Solution be used to accelerate virtual desktops (RDP, Citrix, VDI)?

  Many virtual desktop applications use compression and encryption by default. With these options enabled acceleration of the virtual desktops is not going to be noticable. When compression and encryption have been disabled the Reptor Acceleration Suite is capable of doing acceleration.

• When accelerating Exchange, why is the improvement factor not very large?

  Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007 use compression and encryption techniques. Accordingly, the Replify solution will not perform as well as usual. When acceleration of these applications is required, the only option available is to disable both the compression and encryption.

• Can web based applications be accelerated using Replify?

  More and more applications are web based. Replify is focused on accelerating HTTP based applications in an intelligent way. When using the Replify Acceleration Suite, great performance gains can be made when accelerating HTTP based applications like SharePoint, ERP applications, Intranets, CRM applications and all other web based applications.

• Can mail access over secured OWA be accelerated?

  Many organizations use HTTPS to secure their internal application to be accessed from the inside and outside of their network. The Replify Reptor is able to accelerate HTTPS traffic.

• Can voice traffic be optimized using the Replify Solution?

  Although the Replify Acceleration Solution is not built to accelerate voice traffic, it can be optimized as long as it uses the TCP/IP protocol. Tests carried out by customers prove that applications such as Skype profit from the application acceleration by increasing the quality of the communication stream.

• What applications profit the most from the Replify Solution?

  Popular customer applications…

  • Any web based application. The current version shows great improvements on:
    • SharePoint
    • SugarCRM
    • ERP applications
    • Windows Networking (CIFS protocol)
    • Lotus Notes
    • FTP (active and passive) transfers
    • TCP based voice application (Skype) have improved call quality
    • HTTPS based application like OWA and intranet environments.

  In essence, any TCP application that has a lot of data transfer is a good candidate to profit from the Replify Solution. Since adding an application for testing is easy, all applications in an organization can be tested. If a specific application is not in for optimization, it can be dropped from the Reptor configuration, and it will revert to it’s standard operation.

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  Competition

  There are other WAN optimization vendors in the market. How is Replify different?

  The first difference is that most of the other vendors use a hardware appliance to accelerate traffic over the WAN. The Replify solution does not use hardware appliances but is a software only solution. Looking at implementation the Replify solution is very flexible. Install the software appliance on the virtualized environment, configure the application servers and the solution is ready to use. Need some more capacity or want to divide application over more software appliances? Power on a new virtual appliance and configure it. The users will be informed on the fly and they will start using the changed environment.

  The other big difference is that the Replify Solution can be installed without changing the current infrastructure. This makes implementation for test or production usage possible without having to interrupt existing traffic.

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  Licensing

  Is the licensing of the Replify Acceleration Suite based on the number of installed or active clients?

  The licensing model is based on the concurrent number of seats you need. You are free to use any combination of Reptor Client and Reptor Virtual Appliance you want - the number of licensed seats is the limitation. Seats are only counted when Reptor Clients are active.

• If an upgrade is performed on a WAN link between the data center and the branch office do I need to change the license?

  No, we do not take the characteristics of the wan-links into account. The licensing is based on the number of active seats and not based on any network infrastructure parameter.

• Can the license of the Replify Solution be easily adjusted?

  If you require more seats, it is possible to buy a license expansion. Upon installation of the new license, the number of seats is immediately activated, with no need to exchange hardware or amend infrastructure.

• My trial license has expired. Can I extend the trial license?

  Replify supplies a trail license once you register for a period of 14 days. When your trial license expires, you can request a extension of the license by contacting us at sales@replify.com . Include the base key in your email and we will get back to you with an extension.

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  Deployment

  The remote clients connect to the central location using a VPN solution. Can the Replify solution still optimize the traffic?

  Yes, The Replify Acceleration Suite is transparent to all VPN solutions. When using the Reptor Client the traffic is optimized before it enters the VPN tunnel. At the other end of the VPN tunnel, the Reptor Virtual Appliance will deal with the traffic.

• How is the client installed on remote PCs?

  The Reptor Client software can be installed from a centralized location (Fileserver or Webserver) or the software can be integrated and distributed via a software distribution solution like MSM or LanDesk.

• Is a Reptor Virtual Appliance required in every branch office?

  The installation of the Reptor Virtual Appliance in a branch office is dependent on the environment of the branch office. If the branch office has no server room, or there are only a few users active in the branch office the decision can be made not to install a Reptor Virtual Appliance in the branch office. All the clients in the branch office with the installed Reptor Client software will perform their own optimization into the centralized data center.

• Does the Replify Solution provide high availability?

  The Replify Acceleration Suite enables applications to continue working, whatever happens in the availability of the Replify Acceleration Suite.

  The Reptor Client monitors the available Reptor Virtual Appliances - If one of the Reptor Virtual Appliances fails, the client will detect it and switch to an alternative Reptor Virtual Appliance if available. When no Reptor Virtual Appliance is available, the client will switch back to the normal network conditions, resulting in an available application accessed without acceleration.

• What is the hardware specification of the server I need to run the Replify Software?

  The hardware you need is not directly dependent on the Replify Software.

  If the hardware specifications of your virtualization software (VMware, Hyper-V, Zen, Virtual Iron) are met, the Replify Acceleration Solution can be installed on the servers.

• For which client OS versions is the Reptor Client available?

  Currently the Reptor Client software is available for Windows XP and Vista (32-bit). The Reptor Client Software can also be run on a Windows2003 server installation.

  A Unix/Linux version is available on request. The Mac OS Reptor Client will be available in Q2 2009.

• What information is needed to configure the Replify Solution?

  To be able to configure the Replify Acceleration Suite besides the normal network information (DHCP or IP information), you will require IP address details of the application servers that you wish to accelerate.

  When installing branch office virtual appliances, information about the local network can be used to direct PC’s with the Reptor Clients installed to the local Reptor Virtual Appliance in the branch office.

• I have a large farm of application servers. Do I need to configure every application server individually?

  No. Functionality can be enabled to make it possible to use a netmask when configuring the application server.