Riverbed and Lotus Notes

We implemented a Lotus Notes email infrastructure for users worldwide, using just 4 domino mail servers.

2 servers are based in the US and 2 servers in the UK.

These servers are accessed by 1600 Notes clients in no less than 60 countries.

One of the challenges in this size of global server consolidation is ensuring that sufficient bandwidth is available, and ensuring that there is little reason to locate a Notes server in the country, even with a sizeable local user population.

The answer to dealing with this challenge has been to use Riverbed Steelhead appliances and Riverbed Mobile client software, both of which have Lotus Notes application layer data reduction/optimisation. This is a relatively new feature introduced in RiOS 5.5 and Steelhead Mobile 2.1.

As an example of the optimisation levels we have experienced on the Notes TCP port 1352 only: (real world numbers, not from a datasheet!)

In our Manila office (40 people using Notes 8.5)

Over the last week, 2518MB of LAN traffic, was reduced down to 648MB over the WAN.
Over the last month, 12.7GB of LAN traffic was reduced down to 3178MB over the WAN.

Over the last week, data reduction of 74% and a bandwidth increase of 3.88 times.
Over the last month, data reduction of 75% and a bandwidth increase of 4.08 times.

In our Melbourne office (50 people using Notes 8.5)

Over the last week, 40.6GB LAN traffic, was reduced down to 1718MB over the WAN.
Over the last month, 76.9GB of LAN traffic was reduced down to 7492MB over the WAN.

Over the last week, data reduction of 95% and a bandwidth increase of 24.16 times.
Over the last month, data reduction of 90% and a bandwidth increase of 10.51 times.

I'm really very impressed with these figures. The benefits of implementing the Riverbed in the infrastructure here have been to achieve great cost savings on Notes administration and managing servers in multiple countries. The users also benefit from much enhanced performance when accessing the central intranet and other applications hosted at HQ. The payback on this solution was easily achieved in less than six months.

For more information on the solution we used, and some solution briefs:

http://www.riverbed.com/results/solutions/accelerate/lotus_notes.php

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