Riverbed is rolling out a series of enhancements for its Steelhead WAN optimization product family, including a new hardware appliance and new path selection capabilities that enable specific applications to be directed over selected WAN paths.
Significantly, the new release of the Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS 8.5) enables application-specific path selection for branch offices where both MPLS and Internet WAN services are available.
Riverbed is integrating DPI in CascadeFlow with RiOS 8.5, thereby leveraging DPI capabilities within Cascade Profiler 10.0.7 to identify and characterize traffic flows across the network and among branch offices. Riverbed said this capability could be used for fine-tuning QoS, directing certain branch office traffic onto the corporate MPLS VPN while sending other application flows directly to alternate paths, or to a cloud service provider using an alternate Internet connection instead of through the MPLS VPN. The combination of path selection and application identification via deep packet inspection also ensures that application flows could be rerouted in the event of performance degradation on the primary route.
The latest software release also adds new application optimizations for the Steelhead appliance, including for Microsoft SharePoint 2013, Exchange 2013, Office365 and file sharing applications that utilize the server message block 3 (SMB3) protocol in Windows 8 and Server 2012 environments, and NetApp SnapMirror for tiered SLAs.
The new hardware includes the Steelhead CX 255 series appliance, which offers up to 6 Mbps of WAN link optimization for small branch offices, which is triple the through-put capacity of the previous Steelhead CX 250 appliance series. CS 255 series also replaces CS 150
Riverbed cites significant performance gains for its WAN optimization — up to 98% decrease in bandwidth utilization and improving application acceleration up to 100 times faster.
RiOS 8.5, Cascade Profiler 10.0.7 and the Steelhead CX series 255 appliances are expected to be generally available in Q3 2013.
