Case Study: Wholesale Distributor frees 2.7 TB/month and cuts backup windows from 18 to 4 hours with Riverbed Steelhead WAN optimization

Wholesale distributor backs up seven remote locations while avoiding additional bandwidth expenses

This privately held wholesale distributor — the largest U.S. convenience‑store supplier, delivering over 11,000 name‑brand products — was straining to back up seven remote locations to headquarters and replicate HQ data to a disaster‑recovery site over a single 45 Mbps DS3 circuit. Adding Oracle and planned SAP traffic threatened to overwhelm the WAN, and projections showed they would have to triple bandwidth to meet DR objectives.

The company deployed Riverbed Steelhead appliances at HQ, the DR center and multiple warehouses and implemented a staggered backup schedule with frequent EMC SAN snapshots. The solution freed about 2.7 TB of monthly capacity, cut WAN traffic by 72%, reduced SAN backup windows from 18 hours to under four, enabled SAP “fat‑client” support, and delivered an expected ROI in roughly 13 months — avoiding costly bandwidth upgrades.