The Riverbed Difference: Speed, Scalability, Simplicity
Speed
Riverbed Steelhead products address performance limitations using a multi-tiered optimisation approach. Unlike older generation technologies, such as wide area file services (WAFS) or file caching, Steelhead products optimise traffic using a patented application agnostic algorithm to achieve massive-scale data deduplication.
The Riverbed solution layers TCP and application protocol optimisation on top of its data reduction technique to deliver a multi-tiered optimisation strategy that sets the technological high-bar for WDS, and delivers unparalleled application acceleration over the WAN.
Scalability
Riverbed’s universal data store provides greater scalability than per-peer storage models and reduces WAN optimisation storage requirements. By avoiding the
per-peer storage limitation, companies can easily scale to hundreds of sites with
any-to-any connectivity.
Steelhead products also utilise a TCP-based transport, which avoids the pitfalls of running a proprietary transport on a shared network. The Steelhead product family supports up to 4Gbps of throughput and one million concurrent connections. The product family is one of the most scalable in the industry.
Simplicity
Companies can deploy Steelhead products in a matter of minutes. Steelhead deployments can be performed from a single console with virtually plug-and-play installations, and the Riverbed solution does not require any changes to clients and servers nor the use of specific routing protocols.
Steelhead products have been proven in a broad range of network environments alongside VoIP, video conferencing, and QoS, giving customers flexibility and seamless integration with the existing infrastructure.
Accelerate Key Enterprise Applications
• Steelhead products accelerate all TCP-based applications through a multi-tiered optimisation approach.
• Riverbed delivers specific application acceleration modules for CIFS, MAPI,
HTTP/HTTPS, NFS, and MS-SQL.
• An easy-to-use GUI provides dashboard visibility of WAN traffic and optimisation status.
The Serverless Branch Office
The rapid pace of business and tight deadlines can challenge IT to keep up with the deployment of new branch offices. The serverless branch office enabled with Steelhead products can help IT ramp up and get branches up and running faster. Steelhead products can be deployed easily in minutes with minimal configuration. With no more complex build outs or remote servers to install and manage, branches
get set up faster, administrative overhead decreases, and users are more productive.
With Riverbed, organisations can perform WAN-based backups or data replication without struggling to finish jobs in a tight backup window. Most enterprise backup solutions are already supported and previously unacceptable backup times can be reduced by over 30 times. With accelerated replication, customers can also take more frequent snapshots and dramatically improve their recovery time in the event of a failure.
Enabling the Mobile Workforce
IT has often struggled to support remote users who need access to corporate data and applications, and mobile users have come to expect suboptimal performance when they work remotely. Steelhead Mobile software extends Riverbed’s award-winning technology to any PC or laptop to deliver acceleration wherever users connect. With Steelhead Mobile, applications run faster and remote workers are no longer “remote.”
The Riverbed Optimisation System (RiOS™)
RiOS software powers Steelhead products through a combination of patent-pending data reduction, TCP optimization, and application-level protocol optimisations. Together, these technologies, along with RiOS management capabilities, provide a comprehensive solution for enterprise WDS. RiOS consists of four key components:
Data streamlining – RiOS data streamlining works across all TCP applications to reduce bandwidth utilization, typically by 60% to 95%. Data streamlining works across file sharing (including Windows and NFS), email (including MS Exchange and Lotus Notes), CAD, ERP, web-based HTTP and HTTPS applications, databases, and all other applications that use TCP.
Transport streamlining – RiOS transport streamlining reduces the number
of TCP packets required to transfer data by 65% to 98%. Transport streamlining also enables the acceleration of SSL-encrypted traffic throughout the enterprise to eliminate the security and performance trade-off. With HS-TCP and MX-TCP, RiOS can enable greater utilisation of high bandwidth links (ie. long fat networks (LFN) such as OC3, OC12, metrofiber).
Application streamlining – RiOS application streamlining offers the broadest support of application-specific modules for key enterprise applications to provide additional application performance improvements on top of the data streamlining and transport streamlining optimisations performed on all TCP traffic.
By reducing application protocol chattiness up to 98% and minimising application overhead, RiOS can provide massive throughput increases to applications including file sharing (CIFS and NFS), Exchange (MAPI), Web (HTTP and HTTPS), and database (MS-SQL).
Management streamlining – RiOS enables easy deployment through auto-discovery of peers and auto-interception of traffic, with no reconfiguration of clients, servers, or routers. Many customers deploy Steelhead products in minutes and RiOS simplifies ongoing management by providing simple, but powerful web-based and command-line interfaces, in-depth reporting and real-time NetFlow export. Simple integration into the network has led to Riverbed deployments in a vast array of network environments and topologies including, but not limited to, MPLS, VoIP, video conferencing, QoS, VPN, satellite infrastructure, ATM, frame relay, microwave, and wireless.
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