MPLS is currently installed at 2 of our Corporate sites (UK). When the MPLS was installed both sites had a large number of users >250 at each site and the plan was for all retail stores to hook into this MPLS Cloud. This was installed before my time. Sounds ok, but things changedover that next few years:
1) The retail stores are all connecting to both sites via VPN with failover in place which works really well as stores can operate if VPN goes down - does not affect any critical business and is a rarity.
2) After alot of department moves, Corporate site 1 consists of 2 small departments - 22 users in total. The other departments moved to Corporate site 2.
Our parent company, in the US, is hooked into the same MPLS cloud and provides access to SAP and one other IT application. So what's the issue? Well Corporate site 1 only consists of 22 users and access to the applications hosted in the US are not critical for them. Also, due to its location, the costs of the MPLS for Corporate site 1 is 3 times as much as Corporate site 2 and speed is very poor i.e. 6Mb on a 10Mb bearer. The objective is to decrease cost while also increasing performance, so the obvious options are:
Option 1) Remove MPLS at Site 1. Create a vpn tunnel to US and another tunnel to Corporate site 2. Site 2 will remain with MPLS. The internet breakout at both Site 1 and 2 is 100Mb on 100Mb bearer 1:1, with backup breakout in place in both site 50/100 1:1:. In the past 2 years, the internet breakout has failed zero times. The MPLS has let us down on average 3 to 4 times a year, although has been resolved within a few hours. Traffic destined from Site 1 to Site 2 will go out over the Site1 to Site2 tunnel. Site1 could also go out over this tunnel to thats destined for US via Site 2 as it remains on the MPLS. If that fails, then can route out over the Site1 to US VPN tunnel. No problems with configuration and routing. Will also use riverbed WAN optimisation at both ends - riverbed has caused serious problems over MPLS - riverbed themselves couldnt figure it out either, but great over vpn tunnel. (I think the riverbed problem over the MPLS is a frame size issue but that's another story)
Option 2) Do nothing and Keep MPLS as VPN tunnel latency might not bring the performance required.
Option 3) Increase MPLS bandwidth. Not ideal as its only on a 10Mb bearer so max is 10Mb. And costs go significantly up. MPLS at site 1 really is a complete rip off but due to location, theres nothing we can do.
So its a decision between MPLS (6Mb over a 10Mb bearer) or VPN with failover (100Mb over 100Mb bearer 1:1)
I should mention that the only traffic between Site 1 and Site 2 is file services and rdp into terminal server and avaya ip office 500 at both sites (I know MPLS is much better for voice and audio but have already rigorously tested over VPN and its perfect)
So any thoughts or advice? I prefer option 1, but would love to hear what you would choose and why. Thank you!