Troubleshooting guide

CHAPTER
REVIEW DRAFT—CISCO CONFIDENTIAL
1-1
Cisco Wide Area Application Services Configuration Guide
OL-26579-01
1
Introduction to Cisco WAAS
This chapter provides an overview of the Cisco WAAS solution and describes the main features that
enable WAAS to overcome the most common challenges in transporting data over a wide area network.
Note Throughout this chapter, the term WAAS device is used to refer collectively to the WAAS Central
Managers and WAEs in your network. The term WAE refers to WAE and WAVE appliances, WAE
Network Modules (the NME-WAE family of devices), SM-SRE modules running WAAS, and vWAAS
instances.
This chapter contains the following sections:
• About Cisco WAAS, page 1-1
• Key Services of Cisco WAAS, page 1-4
• Overview of the WAAS Interfaces, page 1-10
• Benefits of Cisco WAAS, page 1-19
About Cisco WAAS
The WAAS system consists of a set of devices called wide area application engines (WAEs) that work
together to optimize TCP traffic over your network. When client and server applications attempt to
communicate with each other, the network intercepts and redirects this traffic to the WAEs so that they
can act on behalf of the client application and the destination server. The WAEs examine the traffic and
use built-in optimization policies to determine whether to optimize the traffic or allow it to pass through
your network unoptimized.
WAAS version 5.0 introduces a new AppNav deployment model that greatly reduces dependency on the
intercepting switch or router by taking the responsibility of distributing traffic among WAAS devices for
optimization. WAAS appliances with AppNav Controller Interface Modules operate in a special AppNav
Controller mode with AppNav policies controlling traffic flow to WAAS devices doing optimization.
The AppNav model is well suited to data center deployments and addresses many of the challenges of
WAN optimization in this environment.
You can deploy WAAS in the new AppNav model or in the traditional model without using AppNav
Controllers.
You use the WAAS Central Manager GUI to centrally configure and monitor the WAEs and optimization
policies in your network. You can also use the WAAS Central Manager GUI to create new optimization
policy rules so that the WAAS system can optimize custom applications and less common applications.