M.Tech! Your Preferred i-Security Partner

Company Overview

Riverbed Technology is the pioneer and, with over 3,500 customers, the worldwide technology and market share leader in wide area data services (WDS). Riverbed provides the first and only comprehensive WDS solution to a host of severe problems that have effectively prevented enterprises from sharing applications and data across wide areas. By wide area, we mean anywhere in the world. Between Chicago and New York. Or between Seattle and Shanghai.

Riverbed's award-winning Steelhead WDS appliances address all of the issues that affect application performance over the WAN, dramatically improving the performance of applications that companies and knowledge workers rely on every day - including file sharing, email, backup, document management systems, IT tools, as well as ERP and CRM solutions. With Riverbed, any of these applications can be accelerated somewhere between 5 and 50, and even up to 100 times faster.

	InfoWorld 2008 - Technology of the Year 2008
	eWeek 2008
	Storage 2008
	InfoWorld CTO 25 of 2007 - Top 25 IT executives June 6, 2007
	TechTarget Products of the Year 2006 – Bronze, Networking Equipment February 5, 2007
	InfoWorld Technology of the Year 2007 – Best WAN Accelerator January 1, 2007
	Network World All-Star Award – US Dept of Health and Human Services OIG Riverbed Deployment September 25, 2006
	Byte and Switch Big Bytes Award – WAN Optimization September 13, 2006
	CMP Technology Xchange Xcellence Award – Innovative Technology September 12, 2006
	Computer Business Review 10 Most Influential Companies in Storage July 19, 2006
	Network Computing Well-Connected Award – Remote Office Network Infrastructure April 24, 2006
	InfoWorld Technology of the Year 2006 – Best WAN Accelerator January 2, 2006
	Digital Times & Electronic Times Customer Satisfaction Awards December 2005
	Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award – Network/Broadband/Internet October 24 , 2005
	Network World Rennovator Award Finalist – Psomas Riverbed Deployment May 16, 2005
	InfoWorld Technology of the Year 2005 – Best WAN Accelerator January 5, 2005
	InfoWorld 100 Best IT Projects of the Year 2004 – Gensler Riverbed Deployment November 15, 2004

Product Overview

Steelhead appliances enable wide-area data services (WDS) for enterprises of all sizes. These appliances make it easy for organizations to accelerate the applications that are most important to their users, anywhere in the world. Steelhead appliances are available in a range of sizes to meet the needs of any remote office – from small sales offices with just a few people, to major design centers and corporate facilities with thousands of employees.

Every Steelhead appliance comes with the full power of the Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS):

Data Streamlining optimizes all WAN traffic by removing all redundant data and prioritizing traffic through advanced QoS mechanisms
Transport Streamlining improves the behavior of TCP
Application Streamlining reduces application protocol inefficiencies and enables disconnected operations
Management Streamlining simplifies the deployment, maintenance, and management of the appliances.

By deploying Steelhead appliances, enterprises see from 5 to 50 times, and in some cases up to 100 times faster application performance, as well as reduced bandwidth utilization. They can ensure faster applications, successful consolidation of distributed IT infrastructure, and enable faster network-based backup. All Steelhead appliances optimize traffic in both directions, transparent to your applications, and require no reconfiguration to client and server software.

Steelhead Appliance Features

Accelerate the Applications that are the Most Important to You
Steelhead appliances are built on an application-independent architecture that optimizes all TCP traffic for bandwidth and TCP behavior. On top of this architecture, Riverbed has built a series of Application Streamlining modules that further optimize applications like Windows, Exchange, HTTP, NFS, and MS SQL.

Transparent Deployment in 15 Minutes or Less
Steelhead appliances do not require any client or server reconfiguration in standard deployment mode. Your applications will continue to work just as they did before the Steelhead appliances were deployed – only faster. There is no proxy configuration required, nor do any routing tables need to be adjusted.

Steelhead appliances are designed to be deployed quickly and easily, often in just ten to fifteen minutes. The boxes can be pre-configured at the factory to your requirements. Then you can literally open the box and plug your new Steelhead appliance into the network. Once deployed, Steelhead appliances can use auto-discovery to automatically find all other Steelhead appliances on the network. This avoids all tedious tunnel configurations often required by other products.

Flexible Deployment, Reporting, and Management

Web GUI and CLI Management and Reporting
Each Steelhead appliance can be managed through a rich GUI or command-line interface. This way, appliances can be set up, configured, and managed remotely. All Steelhead appliances can report traffic and network optimization, and segment reports by port, protocol, or IP address range.

Enterprises can also deploy the optional Central Management Console (CMC) appliance, which allows you to configure and manage many Steelhead appliances simultaneously. The CMC allows group management of devices, dynamic reporting, scheduled operations, over-the-wire software upgrades, and automatic “touchless” setup of new Steelhead appliances in your network.

Highly Configurable, Flexible Deployment
The default state for Steelhead appliances is to intercept and optimize all WAN traffic. However, administrators have the option to restrict or specify optimization by protocol, port, or IP address range.

Steelhead appliances can be deployed in many places in the network. They can be deployed in-path, out-of-path, in various high-availability configurations, near specific servers, or virtually anywhere that meets your needs.

Designed for Reliability and Availability
Steelhead appliances can be deployed in a variety of high-availability configurations in order to provide continued optimized performance in the event of an appliance failure. These configurations are available for both in-path and out-of-path deployments. Steelhead appliances also enable automated datastore copying, ensuring that failover devices have the most recent user data available. In addition, Steelhead appliance models 3020 and up also feature RAID and triple power supplies to improve reliability.