Serverless office management in low-bandwidth scenarios

Remote work is no longer a luxury — it’s essential, and isn’t about to change.

A new way to manage networks

Effective management and control of data on both 'well-connected' corporate networks and across expensive wide area network (WAN) connections is vital to business success and productivity.

Overview

Many enterprises are consolidating IT operations to cut costs at branch facilities. However, consolidation of branch server resources poses challenges, especially for the large data payloads required to keep today's IT environment patched and operational. A constant flow of upgrades to operating systems and applications puts pressure on networks and IT operations.

Many IT departments are moving to a 'serverless' branch office for the ultimate in cost and energy savings. With new peer-to-peer software acting as wide area network (WAN) optimization appliances, this is now possible without compromising performance, even for remote operating system rebuilds of large desktop estates.

Optimization

Moving to a serverless office does not require investing in WAN optimization appliances that compensate for the distance between branch offices and the data center. IT can remove the larger payloads with peer-to-peer and data deduplication technology instead, for improved network and cost efficiency.

While you can’t change the laws of physics, you can use WAN optimization software to cut down on the amount of network chatter passing back and forth to accomplish a given task, such as downloading a file, keeping operating systems up to date, etc.

Microsoft BranchCache and Delivery Optimization technologies can deliver local area network (LAN)-like performance over a more economical WAN network architecture.

Typical case

Remote branch offices will typically range from a handful of systems to perhaps a couple of hundred. Often these will be a healthy mix of desktops and laptops, with some laptops being off the network for periods of time. In many cases there is no facility (or desire) to host servers in these locations, and network bandwidth to the head offices and datacentres is highly contested.

This is where peer-to-peer really comes to the rescue.

The challenge

For the 'serverless' office to succeed, we need to transparently deliver ever-increasing amounts of background content from centralized data storage locations to endpoints, while keeping enough bandwidth free to provide users an uninterrupted production experience.

Enter StifleR

2Pint Software’s StifleR manages all transfers via WAN or LAN by collectively monitoring and controlling endpoint download activity. It controls peer-to-peer enabled content transfers from both the cloud/Internet and corporate data sources.

Technology

StifleR is built on industrial strength Microsoft technologies such as SignalR and Delivery Optimization. These are technologies that you already own, so why not start using them for real?

Even though many software and patch deployments require content to be distributed to all machines in the branch at the same time (typically for software updates, but also planned roll-outs of a new application), the 2Pint Software components will spread the network load while prioritizing and protecting the WAN links.

Instant visibility

Remote does not mean running blind. Real-time dashboards let you visualize all software distributions in the entire enterprise, with just a 2-second delay. This allows you to react with confidence and see the results of that action in a few seconds – even across thousands of systems.

Act fast and drive change

Ensures business traffic is unaffected by systems management background activity or other unwanted network traffic. Prioritize traffic as your needs change throughout the year or as the company expands.

In more detail

Software applications and updates may be distributed in the form of a single 'self-extracting' file (e.g. in MSI or EXE format), or may involve the distribution of several files. Distribution of OS images requires the transfer of very large WIM files and the process of deploying the image to a workstation will typically require additional content (applications) not included in the image.

These deployments have to contend with other applications using the WAN and must avoid adversely impacting the normal flow of business relying upon it. To achieve deployment within an acceptable time period, WAN traffic should be minimized, and bandwidth used efficiently.

Network and bandwidth optimization involves ensuring content only traverses the WAN once and is shared out within the branch (rather than each client obtaining it from the source server). The download process must remain aware of existing traffic levels to throttle demand on the link accordingly and take advantage of 'quiet' periods but back off when other traffic requires the bandwidth.

In a serverless office, the dependency is on the client workstations to provide the local data cache. It is therefore important that the workstation that hosts the cache is available at all times, or that the cache is replicated on several machines to provide resilience.

Remote builds – a new way to deploy Windows from anywhere

For a serverless office, not having any local servers often means losing the ability to rebuild machines remotely in a secure and efficient way.

Remote build

iPXE Anywhere enables remote build with remote over-the-WAN PXE booting that simplifies and speeds up enterprise-wide OS deployments of any PC.

Boot securely using either USB (iPXE binary only on the USB media) or PXE boot directly in your remote locations. You can even boot directly from the cloud, over the Internet, using secure HTTPS network booting.

Solution

iPXE Anywhere provides complete flexibility so that practically any scenario can be easily covered with minimal management overhead. Extremely simple to set up and manage, iPXE Anywhere is unsurpassed as a solution to the challenges of modern Windows management.

Microsoft Endpoint Configuratoin Manager and iPXE Anywhere

Solution summary

No requirement for a local server

Support for remote, serverless software and operating system distribution

Efficient use of available bandwidth, making use of bandwidth as it becomes available without overload

No dependency for any one client to always be available

2Pint Software technology used:

StifleR Enterprise – for bandwidth management and monitoring
iPXE Anywhere 2PXE Server – for remote operating system deployment
iPXE Anywhere Web Service – for custom scenarios
OSD Toolkit – for the WinPE carrier

Works with the following Microsoft technology:

Microsoft Configuration Manager (MEMCM)
Microsoft Intune
PowerShell Deployment (PSD)
Any other systems management technology for Windows management – Contact Us!