The Riverbed Blog

Does Telework...Work???

 

     Dear readers, my name is Boris Kilimnik and I'm the Channel Sales Engineer for Riverbed Federal.  I've decided to create this blog in order to provide my own personal perspective on Riverbed, its technology, and  ways to provide GREAT value to our customers while helping them save money, especially in todays tough economy.

     The Telework Exchange is promoting Telework Week this quarter during March 5th - 9th.  The concept sounds great…work from home during the week, which will save time, money, and the environment.  In fact, "During Telework Week 2011, nearly 40,000 pledged, saving $2,730,229 on commuting costs, gaining back 148,692 hours into their day, and removing 1,818 tons of pollutants from the air, while refraining from driving 3,764,001 miles" (http://teleworkexchange.com/teleworkweek/).  What the article fails to mention is the darker side of working from home…more specifically how much slower enterprise applications perform across the WAN compared to the LAN in the office.  Suddenly e-mail starts timing out, CIFS or file sharing becomes unusable, database performance comes to a grinding halt, you get the point…so yes, telework sounds great on paper but it does come with some serious challenges that need to be addressed in order to make "telework" a reality for the federal market.

     Obviously Riverbed is here to save the day…why else would I be writing this blog post???  However, before I tell you about our telework solution and how a large Federal customer, keep reading to find out who, is using our solution to provide optimization to over 12,000 employees working from home, I will tell you a short story about something that truly surprised me when I joined Riverbed.

     When I received my laptop during my first week at Riverbed, the first thing I noticed was a little "r" icon by the clock.  This was the Steelhead Mobile Client, which I learned is loaded on every single laptop for every employee in the company.  If you have no idea what the Steelhead Mobile Client is then PLEASE e-mail your Riverbed Rep ASAP, but essentially it is the same technology that is in every Steelhead appliance but packaged as a software that runs in the background of any Windows or Apple computer to provide WAN Optimization directly to the desktop/laptop.  At that point I realized that at Riverbed we don't just create and sell WAN Optimization technology but we use it internally and benefit from it as well.  How many of our competitors sales reps use their own mobile client on their laptops?  I guarantee you the answer is none.  At Riverbed we eat our own dog food, and that allows us to confidently go into any account and talk about the virtues of our mobile solution since we use it internally every single day.  Download WhitePaper-Riverbed_Relies_on_Riverbed  In fact, the screen shot below demonstrates the performance gains I have been able to realize with Steelhead Mobile on my own laptop…about a 67% reduction in total WAN data with a 3x capacity increase.  What this means is that on average I use 67% less bandwidth across the WAN, which really makes an impact when I'm traveling and am using either my iPhone, GoGo in the air, or a shared internet connection in a hotel.  Without Steelhead Mobile, applications such as Email sometimes don't work at all, especially when I'm traveling in remote locations…but with Steelhead Mobile, enterprise applications such as Email work just as fast as they do over my high speed link in the office.

     Going back to our federal customer…the customer is actually an agency within the Department of Commerce that issues patents and trademark registration.  In fact, there is even a personal side to this story.  Both of my next door neighbors are patent examiners at this agency.  About 3 weeks ago they were upgraded to new laptops with the Riverbed Steelhead Mobile Client running, and in their words, the performance difference was like night and day.  With Riverbed, all of their applications became significantly faster, which ultimately allowed them to be more efficient and expeditious in examining patent application, therefore increasing their performance and providing a significant ROI to this federal customer.

     Bottom line…telework is becoming a reality, and the only way your customers will be able to work as efficiently from home as they do from the office is by using the Steelhead Mobile Client technology from Riverbed!

-Boris Kilimnik

boris@riverbed.com

 

Application Delivery Controllers – it’s all about the Application

Yet again, we hear the same tired, old line that a software ADC is somehow “a lower-end solution. It's got all the functionality but it doesn't have the performance”.  In a recent interview, F5 CEO John McAdam went on to assert that software offers “single-digit gigabits-per-second vs. hundreds of gigabits-per-second” for an integrated hardware solution.  This simultaneously flatters F5’s own Virtual Edition (which tops out at 1 Gbps) and overstates the real-world capacity of integrated hardware appliances that depend on hardware fast paths to achieve such performance heights; layer4/7 fast-paths that preclude the use of the sophisticated ADC functionality that is often needed to support the application.

The application and infrastructure experts who take responsibility for the successful deployment and delivery of a business’s applications think differently in term of performance: page views, site visitors, number of customers, transactions per second, and service levels and page load time.  These need to be measured within the context of the specific capabilities of an ADC that are required to deliver the applications effectively.  Performance depends on the efficiency of the ADC software and scales with the CPU capacity of the server or appliance. 

Measuring the value of an ADC solution in terms of gigabits alone is understandable when hardware is your differentiator, but it misses the value of an ADC.  The value that distinguishes an ADC from a network load balancer is realized when it finds it way to the individual who understands the needs of the applications. An ADC is a tool to help deal with unexpected application problems, application security vulnerabilities, flash floods that need smart prioritization, to facilitate routine maintenance, yet so often we hear the same complaint from application owners at organizations where hardware ADCs are incumbent – frustration that the tool that might fix their problem is managed by another team who have very different goals, constraints and SLAs.

Organizational changes alone cannot resolve these difficulties. There will certainly always be a place for the hulking hardware ADC-asaurus, exiled to the edge of the datacentre to perform basic load balancing and routing with little thought, but the more challenging application delivery problems need the flexibility and scale that only an on-tap software solution can offer.

The emerging datacentre infrastructure, whether physical, virtual or cloud, shows two qualities – programmable to the needs of the business services that are delivered, and responsive to the needs of the applications that make up the services.  Insisting that an ADC will always be tied to a piece of tin fails to recognise neither this trend in infrastructure, nor the needs of the new application users of advanced ADC functionality.

We’re proud to find ourselves helping customers to achieve things with their applications that they could not do with our technology.  Software (ADC, web/app server, whatever), in the hands of the application experts, enables quick prototyping, rapid application release cycles, flexible and immediate test environments, and our customers know their investment in our Stingray technology can grow and move with them as their business grows with their success.

Extending Stingray Traffic Manager with TrafficScript

One of my duties as a Channel System Engineer is to update our partners on our new technologies and products. In the recent months after people heard that we acquired two new outstanding technologies, I was often asked why believe that the Zeus ADC now Stingray Traffic Manager is superior to other ADCs on the market.

Of course there are many different correct answers to this question. But for me one of the main reasons is its flexibility, scalability and of course the fact that it is highly customizable, making it a solution that is easy to adapt to all the customer scenarios out there.

For those who might have missed it: Stingray Traffic Manager is a high-availability, application-centric traffic management and load balancing virtual ADC. It provides control, intelligence, security and resilience for all application traffic. Stingray Traffic Manager is intended for organizations hosting valuable business-critical services, such as TCP and UDP-based services like HTTP (web) and media delivery, and XML-based services such as Web Services.

Stingray Traffic Manager’s architecture ensures it can handle large volumes of network traffic efficiently. Its scalability allows you to add more front-end traffic managers or back-end servers as the need arises. The cluster size is unlimited, and the performance of the traffic manager grows in line with the performance of the underlying hardware.

These are all amazing features Stingray TM provides for scalabilty and felxibilty, but today I would like to talk specifically about one of the capabilities of the Stingray Traffic Manager that extends the possibilities mentioned above and makes it highly adaptable beyond what would be achievable with a monolithic approach: TrafficScript.

Using the TrafficScript language you can write tailored traffic management rules to inspect, manage and route requests and responses in every imaginable way.

TrafficScript rules can be executed whenever a new connection or network request is received, and whenever it receives a response from a node. The rules you create inspect the incoming and outgoing data in the connection, and other aspects such as  e.g. the remote client address, destination address and port. You can write rules that can then modify the request or response (for example, rewriting the URL or headers in an HTTP request), set session persistence parameters, or decide how to route the request or even rewrite the content of the output page.

 

 

There are many occasions when you might want to use a TrafficScript rule.:

• You can use a rule to dictate session persistence information

• Rules can be used to check the response from the server and modify it, or even retry the request (if possible) if a transient error was detected.

•  If you use various back-end systems with different presentation styles or even different protocols, rules can be used to integrate them into a single, coherent and consistent service. Incoming requests can be rewritten into the format suitable for the required service, and responses can be rewritten into a single, consistent form.  For example, HTTP requests that involve a database lookup can be rewritten into SOAP request for a Web Service; the XML response can then be transformed into a suitable HTML document to return via HTTP.

• Rules can specify custom behavior for each connection; e.g. connections to a slow resource can be given a longer response time tolerance for example.

• Security:  You can use a rule to check packets for a match with known web worms or viruses.

• Data Protection: you can write rules that ensure that sensitive data like credit card numbers or social security numbers are automatically hidden even if they were to be displayed in the output of a web page by accident.

 

One of the great properties of TrafficScript is that it is easy to learn and understand! Even for people with little coding experience. You don’t have to worry about having to learn an entirely new, complicated scripting language, TrafficScript will look familiar even to the untrained eye.

 

Here are two examples of TrafficScript rules:

 

1) Restricting Access Based on the Time of Day

This example only allows access to a particular service during office hours (between 9am and 6pm, Monday to Friday). It discards all connections that occur outside these times.

$dayofweek = sys.time.weekDay();

$hourofday = sys.time.hour();

# $dayofweek: Sunday is 1, Saturday is 7

# $hourofday: office hours are between 9am and 5:59pm if( $dayofweek == 1 ||

    $dayofweek == 7 ||

    $hourofday < 9  ||

$hourofday >= 18 ) {

  log.warn( "Warning: access out of hours!" );

  connection.discard();

}

 

2) Customer Prioritization

This example inspects the cookie in an HTTP request. It uses the value of the cookie to determine which pool to direct the request to. One pool is faster than the other because it contains machines that are reserved for premium users.

A company has a customer base divided into “gold” and “silver” membership. It wishes to give priority to the “gold” customers and has five servers, yellow, green, blue, black and purple.

Two server pools are created: standard, for the “silver” customers, containing machines yellow, green and blue; and premium, for the “gold” customers, which includes all five of the servers. Thus black and purple are only available to the “gold” customers.

 

 

The site uses a cookie login system, with the customer type encoded in the cookie. Different membership levels can be detected, and sent to the correct pool.  This is the script needed to achieve this:

$cookie = http.getHeader( "cookie" );

if( string.contains( $cookie, "gold" )) {

   pool.use( "premium" );

} else {

   pool.use( "standard" );

}

5 short lines of code to ensure that your premium customers get the best possible service!

 

These two short examples  show that TrafficScript is indeed a very approachable, easy to learn scripting language. The best part is: our outstanding Support Team will assist you if you have problems writing or adaptig your own TrafficScripts.

This is part of your support contract and ensures that there is someone around to help you at all times at no extra cost.

For a detailed overview and syntax  to get you started, take a look at our Stingray Traffic Manager TrafficScript Guide.

Of course there is also a community of TrafficScript Users that can help you with your first (and further) steps. Visit them  at http://community.riverbed.com/t5/Stingray-Family/ct-p/zeusproducts  for code samples, answers to your questions and further documentation.

 

 

 

Is Optimization The End Game?

Dare I say it?

Ok, I’ll whisper it quietly; there is something beyond optimization and acceleration!

For a long time Riverbed have been telling the World about how to optimize, accelerate, monitor and report on network application traffic. But optimization and acceleration have a finite limit; there is only so much performance you can squeeze out of your infrastructure. At some point you are still going to reach a weight of traffic that the infrastructure is unable to cope with.

It is likely that the first things to suffer will be the web or application servers themselves, especially once you have removed the latency and bandwidth restrictions from your WAN using Steelheads. So what then? Do you just have to accept that this is the case, or deploy more resource to just sit there waiting for these high tides of traffic?

Obviously the answer is no, or I would not have started writing this blog post!

What’s required is intelligence in the data centre, to monitor application responsiveness and to take appropriate action when the performance hits thresholds set by the business. But what is the appropriate action? This is entirely down to the nature of the organisation and the applications that are critical to it.

A couple of examples:

Your organisation has an internal CRM; it is used to handle all the day to day admin required for your customers and also the payments application. On occasion at the end of a month, or more importantly at the end of a quarter, the application slows down to a nearly unusable state. The business requirement here is to ensure that the users inputting orders always get a good service, even at the cost of the users making administrative changes. Remembering that this may be the same user at different times.

Enter Stingray Traffic Manager; deployed in front of the application servers it is able in the first instance to have some impact in improving the performance. Secondly using a feature called Service Level Monitoring, it is able to recognise when the servers start responding slower than the acceptable threshold configured by the business. At this point the choices are numerous, in this particular instance it was decided that the best solution would be to start applying a Request Rate Shape to the less important traffic, slowing down the number of requests per second going into the admin side of the CRM. This frees resource on the application servers, that is then used by the payments service, increasing responsiveness.

When the high tide starts to subside, the service level monitor also picks this up and stops enforcing the rate shape on the admin users. From this point on everyone is getting a good level of service from the CRM.

The second example is of an online, Internet facing business, an eCommerce type site or similar (banking, gaming etc. they all have very familiar issues and requirements).

In this example all users are accessing the same application, and it is the type of user rather than what they are using that we wish to use as the key to our differentiation. Let’s imagine it is November and traffic to the site is starting to build up, with the peak periods causing slow-downs to the service. The business decides that they want to do two things: differentiate between people who have visited the site regularly (and spending lots of money), and those who have visited infrequently or not at all. They also want to make a decision based on what the user has in their shopping cart, which trumps whether they are a frequent visitor or not!

Here comes Stingray Traffic Manager again…

In this case we can use the same Service Level Monitor feature, to be the trigger, and also use Request Rate Shaping to apply different rates to the customers (based on a cookie placed in their browser from previous visits). But we will also have a dedicated “auto-scaling pool” of servers available for those customers who look to be spending big with us today!

Auto-Scaling is a feature that allows the Traffic Manager to communicate with a back end provisioning system and arrange for more resource to be made available. Hitting the API on vCenter, for example, and getting a second (or third, or forth etc.) web server spun up in our ESX Cluster to then spread the traffic load across.

In this case we will have two pools of servers for the Traffic Manager to select from, a normal pool with three servers in it, and an auto-scaling pool that starts with zero servers in it. When the normal pool is coping with traffic happily then all users connections are directed and load balanced to these servers. When it starts to get busy, then users with larger values in their shopping carts are directed to the “auto-scaling pool” that immediately starts to add servers as they are required (either to a limited number or until the service hits an acceptable level of responsiveness). In the other pool of servers because there is a limited number of nodes available, a rate shape is applied based on whether you are a Band A customer or a Band B, C or D. Band A being those customers with a cookie indicating they have spent over $200 this year, Band D meaning the customer has no cookie (i.e. likely to be a new user), and the B and C bands being lesser spending customers.

In both of these examples the result is that traffic/users/applications are prioritised and handled in the way the business requires them to be, based on the present circumstances and the logic put in place. This is the key to TrafficScript (the scripting language at the heart of the Stingray Traffic Manager) it is a tool to turn a business requirement, into the reality of what happens to the application traffic on the network.

So to answer the initial question, no, optimizations and acceleration are not the end game; they are extremely important steps on the way to the end game. But what is really needed is a holistic approach that uses the resource available to it’s furthest limit, but when that resource limit is reached business logic is applied to ensure the organisations objectives are reached.

---

 [NB1]What’s the proper byline we use here?

Riverbed Introduces Suite of New Products and an Innovative Architectural Approach to Completely Consolidate IT

Every once in a while as a technology professional you get an opportunity to work on something disruptive.  This one is big. 

Today Riverbed introduced an architectural approach to consolidated IT known as edge virtual server infrastructure (Edge-VSI).  At the core of edge-VSI is Granite, a first of its kind edge server consolidation product.  

Edge-VSI does for edge servers outside of the data center what virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) did for desktops:  allow IT to consolidate edge servers in the data center, without impacting application performance at the edge.  To enable this approach, Riverbed introduces Granite, which allows organizations to consolidate servers and storage from edge locations to the data center, yet project the data to the edge of the enterprise as if it were local. 

This innovation decouples storage from compute delivering the best of all worlds:  100% consolidation and control of data while delivering LAN-like performance of applications at the edge.  All at up to 50% of the costs of traditional, distributed infrastructure.

In addition to Granite, Riverbed introduced two new Steelhead product series: 

•  Steelhead CX  - a series of dedicated WAN optimization appliances for the WAN optimization enthusiast

•  Steelhead EX - an enterprise-class branch office appliance series featuring WAN optimization and a VMware virtualization hypervisor for the consolidation enthusiast

Both Steelhead CX and Steelhead EX appliances have more resources (CPU, memory) and deliver more impressive specifications (throughput, TCP connections) than previous models.  Enjoy!

Riverbed Granite In Action

"It does what...?"

I've heard this double-take question more than once as we describe what Riverbed Granite is able to do.  The innovation sometimes takes a minute to sink in.  "Separate storage from compute?  Solve the problem at the block-level? What does that mean anyway?"  What it means is that Riverbed customers have a new arrow in their consolidation quiver.  

By delivering the breakthrough of accelerating at the block-level across the WAN, Granite enables organizations to do things they couldn't do before. We sometimes have described Granite as being able to "consolidate the un-consolidatable."  And its true.  Anyone who has found themselves shackled by requirements for servers in the branch because of the need for local block-storage access should keep reading. In the remainder of this entry I will highlight examples of Granite in action.  In other words - let me give a few use cases - and hopefully if you've got anything considered "un-consolidatable" you'll see how Granite - and the new Edge-VSI approach can help you.

Consolidate and Control

Imagine a growing business - one that is generating a lot of data with custom applications that are running in global locations. You're happy to be growing, but you're left managing servers in places you never thought you'd visit. Ever. You've got valuable data "assets" in locations that lets say are a bit on the sketchy side.  But business is business. Can't strip out the servers/storage or else business can't flow - or can it?  Granite's unique capability to project block-level storage from the data center to the edge means you CAN CONTROL the data in the data center, and run virtualized instances of your branch-bound applications at the edge. Every single block of data is managed on your enterprise-class storage area network (SAN) in the data center even though it is serving the needs of far flung branches. Go and Grow - your concerns about where that data is are alleviated. You know where it is. You control it.

Consolidate and Simplify

What about management? We've heard from many customers about the cost and effort of managing the remaining infrastructure in the branch - servers, storage, backup. Granite and the concept of Edge-VSI make it possible to establish a "stateless" branch office in the sense that virtualized applications can run on compute in the branch but data stores are located within and managed from the data center. Here your business can Grow as you Go.  A site can easily connect a VM to a Granite "projected" storage LUN from the data center.  Size it for today.  Need more space in the future?  Expand the LUN at the data center and the branch gets more space - just like that.  No need to fly in to install new hard drives.  

Consolidate and Protect

Backup in the branch. It's not really your ideal scenario, but the data is there so you've mapped out how to make sure it's protected. Maybe it's a tape backup once every 24 hours - sent back to HQ - and recovery is that in reverse. Or maybe you backup over the WAN. In either case there's the added expense and worry of setting up the infrastructure, managing it - and hoping for the best. With Granite, data that was once thousands of miles away is now within your enterprise SAN - a very well qualified "offsite location". In the data center it can be protected with your mature data center data protection practices. It's much easier to move beyond once-a-day recovery points to something more frequent. Pair that with youre already-established replication between data centers and you've got full fledged enterprise-class protection for that data that was once somewhere "out there." You can restore in a number of ways. Catastrophic loss in the branch? Set up a new Granite Edge and reconnect to the data center. Or restore at a more granular level and stream back to the branch on demand. Even if your active branch doesn't quite appreciate the new level of protection, they will be very happy with faster restores.

Hopefully these use cases illuminate for you what we mean when we say that Granite enables a new architectural approach to consolidation. It is of course exciting to launch a new technology in the marketplace - and we at Riverbed are equally excited for you to try Granite for yourself to see the possibilities it can bring to your business.

Stingray Traffic Manager Version 8.1 released

Stingray Traffic Manager was released on Monday January 23, 2012 via customers’ download pages and is available for evaluation.

Stingray Traffic Manager 8.1 is an important revision of the Stingray product family, containing a number of performance and functionality enhancements and bug fixes. Customers are recommended to upgrade to this version to take advantage of the changes. For more details of the changes, take a look at the Release Notes.

 Major Features in 8.1

SNMPv2c

Support for SNMPv2c bulk requests and 64-bit counters has been added. The SNMPv1 solution of splitting 64-bit counters into two 32-bit counters is still available for backward compatibility with v1 clients. An SMIv2-compatible MIB has been added for use by SNMPv2c and SNMPv3 clients. The previous MIB is still supported for backward compatibility. SNMPv2c Notifications can be emitted in addition to SNMPv1 Traps.

SNMPv3

A single SNMPv3 user can now be configured to allow authenticated and encrypted requests and responses to be sent. For authentication, MD5 and SHA-1 are supported; DES-CBC is used as the symmetric cipher for encryption and decryption.

Integration with Cloud Steelhead Discovery Agent on EC2 and ESX

It is now possible to use Cloud Steelhead instances running on the Amazon cloud and ESX-based public clouds for WAN optimization.

Other changes in 8.1

For the full list of changes in 8.1, please refer to the Release Notes.

Contacting support

Please contact support on support@riverbed.com.

Upgrading

Customers with valid maintenance and support contracts will be able to download this release from their customer page. See the relevant instructions for upgrading your Riverbed Stingray or Zeus installation.

• Stingray Software users - Upgrading Stingray software
• Stingray Appliance users - Upgrading Stingray appliances (virtual and hardware)
• Stingray on Amazon EC2 - Upgrading Stingray on Amazon EC2

Documentation

The documentation for Stingray Traffic Manager 8.1 may be found here.

MEETING HIPAA COMPLIANCE WITH TRAFFIC SCRIPT

In today’s world more and more applications and associated data are being migrated to the Cloud. For instance, in Canada, the Canadian government has announced plans to consolidate hundreds of data centers into a government run cloud. (http://news.gc.ca/web/article-eng.do?nid=614499).  One of the major questions, consumers ask is how private is their data? 

Most data centers have several layers of physical as well as logical security built into them. Data that is stored can even be encrypted. But how do you prevent an individual’s privacy when doing research? This questions keeps coming up in various scenarios.  I am going to talk about one such situation that recently cropped up in a meeting between Riverbed Technology and one of our major Systems Integrators.

I learned about a very interesting HIPAA compliance challenge. Our Security Architect, from our CTO office, is on the privacy board of a health care research program.  He was talking to our partner about a specific “privacy” challenge involved in de-identifying clinical records so that researchers can use the data without discovering who the individual patients are. On the back of a napkin (literally), he created a small record set:

 

Name	Zip	DoB	Pain Medication	Treatment
Alice	98761	09/01/1960	Asprin	Leg Pain
Bob	98712	01/01/1958	Ibuprofen	Leg Pain
Joe	98743	12/15/1955	Motrin	Phantom leg pain
Smith	98785	01/01/1955	Tylenol	Phantom leg pain
Walker	98735	01/01/1971	Motrin	Pain in amputated leg

Obviously this data is identifiable! Easy algorithms exist to obfuscate the most obvious elements. Such algorithms would produce this record set: 

Name	Zip	YoB	Pain Medication	Treatment
******	987**	1960	Asprin	Leg Pain
******	987**	1958	Ibuprofen	Leg Pain
******	987**	1955	Motrin	Phantom leg pain
******	987**	1955	Tylenol	Phantom leg pain
******	987**	1971	Motrin	Pain in amputated leg

For many kinds of analysis, broad geographic area and birth year are important. You’d guess that even a researcher who resided in a location with a 987 zip code would be unable to identify individual records. Lots of people experience pain, and it’s reasonable to assume that a large subset of patients born before 1960 might opt for marijuana treatments. 

But note that the 2 folks who take Marijuana take it for Phantom Leg Pain and Pain in Amputated leg.

Phantom leg pain is pretty rare, occurring only in those with missing limbs—which has the unfortunate characteristic of being very obvious.  It is very similar to the pain described as Amputated leg pain. Do you think a researcher living in 987 might know who this amputee is? Probably.  Does that researcher now know more than he/she needs to know about this person?  Definitely.  In this case, the de-identification requirement failed, and HIPAA compliance is at risk.

Stingray Traffic Script to the rescue 

With a simple TrafficScript in Stingray Traffic Manager, you can block the transmission of data containing combinations of elements that would, in this case, carry the risk of uniquely identifying specific individuals. For example, from a list of diagnoses and a list of treatments, you could create a dataset of potentially identifying pairs. Then, whenever this pair appears in the output of an application, your rule can follow whatever policy you’ve decided is appropriate. For example, your policy could require:

 

·         Deleting the entire record

·         Removing the pair

·         Removing just the diagnosis

·         Removing just the treatment

 

Each of these choices requires making some kind of tradeoff that lowers the total value of the dataset to the researcher. The overarching point to remember is that security decisions are best made in consultation with business units and other stakeholders. Once those decisions are made, then you can configure Stingray Traffic Manager to enforce your policy. 

Here’s an example TrafficScript that would provide the data to the researcher but would still protect the individuals.

 

$keywords = data.get ( "runonce" );             # retrieve keywords from memory  if ( !$keywords ) {    $keywords = resource.getLines("HipaaWords"); # read keywords from disk    data.set("runonce", $keywords);              # save keywords in memory  }    $response = http.getResponseBody();            # get the response    foreach ($word in $keywords) {     $response = string.replaceAllI($response, $word, "");  # remove keyword  }    http.setResponseBody($response);               # update the modified response

 

The end result of running this script is a results table as follows:

 

Name	Zip	YoB	Pain Medication	Treatment
******	987**	1960	Asprin	Leg Pain
******	987**	1958	Ibuprofen	Leg Pain
******	987**	1955	Motrin	leg pain
******	987**	1955	Tylenol	leg pain
******	987**	1971	Motrin	Pain in leg

 

 

The first thing we do is create a simple table of all the words and phrases that we don’t want to display in the end result. I call this table the “HipaaWords”.   Four our example this is essentially a text file having the following 2 lines

 

Hipaa Words text file:

Phantom

amputated

 

The advantage of keeping this in a file is:

• A text file can be easily loaded into the reference section of the Stingray Traffic Manager.
• As our selection criteria changes, it is easy to change the contents of the file

  

Authors:  Raja Srinivasan, Jim Young

 

Join Riverbed at AFCEA West 2012

We're making a presence at the first Federal show of the year, the West 2012 conference, which will take place January 24-26 at the San Diego Conference Center in San Diego, California. Visit the Riverbed booth (#1910) to learn about our IT performance solutions, which help defense organizations meet government mandates – to consolidate data centers, reduce costs for IT, and execute on the cloud first policy – without compromising performance.

West 2012 is co-sponsored by AFCEA International and the U.S. Naval Institute, and is the largest defense technology event on the U.S. west coast for communications, electronics, intelligence, information systems and imaging. The theme of this year’s West 2012 conference is “America’s Military at the Crossroads: What’s Out and What’s In for 2012 and Beyond?” Defense and industry leaders will discuss and debate the technologies and approaches for successful military programs this year.

For more information on the West 2012 event, visit: http://www.afcea.org/events/west/12/introduction.asp.

 

The Top Blog of 2011 -- RiOS 7.0

Time now to reveal the #1 Riverbed blog post of 2011. 

This decision is not one that we've made lightly.  We consulted with The Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Nobel Committee in Oslo, the Baseball

Writers of America, and we even interviewed people on the street.  When none of those gave us any useful guidance, we flipped some coins and rolled some multi-sided dice, and came to our final decision.

The #1 Riverbed blog of 2011 was originally published in December, and was all about the announcement of RiOS 7.0, and the series of follow-on blog articles that came after it.

The original announcement blog was followed by a series of additional blog articles and videos over the following few days that enumerated many of the exciting new features that can be found in RiOS 7.0.

You can find the additional blog articles about those features listed below:

• Accelerating Satellite WAN traffic
• Live video splitting over HTTP
• The Embedded Shark inside Your Steelhead
• Improved Virtual Desktop Acceleration
• Riverbed Loves ALL Traffic
• More details on HTTP Stream Splitting

Plus there are a series of videos and podcasts all about RiOS 7.0's new features:

• The overall announcement and discussion
• We love ALL traffic
• Video Optimization
• More on Video Optimization
• On-demand Packet Capture and Analysis

And that takes us to the end of our first-ever end-of-year review of our blog.  Thank you for staying with us.

And while we're thanking people, special thanks to Bob Gilbert (and Jasmine!), Steve Riley, and all of our regular blog contributors.  We are looking forward to another great year in the blog.

 

The Top Ten Blogs of 2011: #2 -- Jasmine the IT Kid Video

On March 27, an unusual (both in content and cuteness) video appeared both onYouTube and in

the Riverbed Blog. 

This video showed a very cute little six-year old girl named Jasmine installing a Steelhead appliance.  Truth be told, Jasmine is the daughter of Bob Gilbert, Director of Marketing here at Riverbed. 

This video became a minor viral hit in some circles, making the rounds at the IT organizations of several Riverbed customers, and receiving more than 13,000 hits on YouTube. 

Will 2012 see the return of Jasmine the IT Kid?  Only time will tell...

 

Riverbed, Five Years On

It was August 2006 and I’d been at a Cisco reseller in Sydney Australia for a couple of years. One of my more progressive customers, a law firm with a major document access issue was desperate to get into WAN Optimisation - in any form. They’d centralised their legal libraries and case documents using Hummingbird’s DM5 Document Management system and access was sloooowwww from far flung places like Perth - 60ms to Sydney and Asia - 200ms+ to Sydney! 

The reseller I worked for – a Cisco Gold reseller - was adamant that the solution would be in a teal coloured box, but alas WAAS had only just been released (having morphed from “WAFS”) and WAAS evaluation hardware was just not available in Australia. My customer said “Give me a Riverbed trial, or we’ll take our [integration] business elsewhere”!

Enter Damien Murphy our first Riverbed Systems Engineer (SE) in Australia. Damien and I met onsite, we put a quick design together, lab tested, then went for lunch. I was keen to move on from the reseller and Riverbed was hiring! About one month later and more interviews than I’ve had hot dinners, I became employee number four in Australia! Just a week prior we hired Tara Martin as our Inside Sales rep. so prior to her there were only two Riverbedders in the whole of Oz!

Five years on and I’m still a Riverbed SE! I think the best part of the job is being able to directly influence product design and features. My customers really do get what they want and it’s all included in their yearly maintenance. Also bugs or issues with a bespoke application are typically fixed in days rather than weeks or months, which makes my customers, and me, really happy!

I’ve seen Steelheads installed in 1,100 site networks, 1 site networks (plus Steelhead Mobile) and  over latencies that’d make your eyes water! Yet even after such a massive amount of Steelheads purchased and deployed, demand just keeps on growing! Riverbed’s recent foray into Storage, Network Visibility and Application Delivery Control has just made the job a whole lot more challenging – which is what every good SE deserves!

The Top Ten Blogs of 2011: #10 -- RiOS 6.5

Over the holiday period, we're going to take a look back at our 2011 blog articles, and review what we feel are the Top Ten blog articles of the year.  (Some of them will include more than one article on the same topic.) The blog articles that we choose represent a wide range of topics that we've written about through the year  We hope you'll take the time to go back and reread the original blog post.

This is a difficult task, as in many ways it's like choosing the favorite of your children.  And we may have skipped some of your favorite blog posts.  If we did, please write about them in the comments and let us know what you liked and why.

In the meantime, on behalf of all of us behind the Riverbed blog, and all of us at Riverbed, we wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season, and a happy, healthy, and safe 2012.

In the #10 spot, we go all the way back to February 7, when we introduced both RiOS 6.5 and Cascade 9.0 on the same day.  And in a related blog, we also point you to May 19, when we shared the InfoWorld review of RiOS 6.5. 

RiOS 6.5 added a number of important features to Steelheads, including:

• End-to-end Client server signing of traffic
• Native Optimizations for SMB v2 traffic
• Full-spectrum Optimization for Outlook Anywhere
• Selective Optimizations for SRDF
• Quality of Service (QoS)

While Cascade 9.0 brought tremendous maturity to Cascade through:

• Executive-level Dashboards
• SLA Reporting
• N-tier Application Discovery Wizard

And the InfoWorld review gave RiOS 6.5 a 9 out of 10.  We're still really proud of that.

Riverbed Connect Podcast #48: Advanced QoS

Bob Gilbert and Sidney Rabsatt discuss Riverbed's QoS capability that is part of the Steelhead family of WAN optimization appliances.

 

 

 

Performance: very important. Integrity: even more.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine was asking some questions about what kinds of risks WAN optimization might pose for data integrity. He was sufficiently skeptical that he established a policy prohibiting any form of WAN optimization on his network. I said I thought that was a little extreme; have you performed any in-house testing to learn how, for example, RiOS strives to maintain integrity? As I thought, he hadn't.

A couple weeks later I found myself in a similar situation: another person questioning the ability to preserve data integrity when WAN optimizers are in the path of the traffic. Sensing a pattern, I'm thinking it's time to address this topic.

Suppose ClientA and ServerB need to communicate with each other. Network equipment between ClientA and ServerB should do everything it can to ensure that the payloads exiting one node are the same as the payloads entering the other node. Sounds simple, right? If most network gear is simply reading datagram headers, making a few changes to a value or two along the way, but not touching the payload, few people worry about data integrity. But when the network equipment actually examines and modifies the payload, well, that can make some people uncomfortable.

RiOS takes several precautions to ensure that the original goal -- traffic out equals traffic in -- is maintained. First, whenever ClientA connects to ServerB, the connection is always permitted: the Steelheads on both sides allow the full connection, even if ClientA has previously connected to ServerB. By not using tunnels or multiplexing, RiOS maintains a one-to-one ratio of active connections between Steelheads and the corresponding connections between clients and servers. A Steelhead doesn't attempt to spoof, or assume the identity of, a client or a server.

Second, RiOS continually validates the integrity and format of its data dictionary. Scalable Data Referencing, the feature that does most of the deduplication work, relies principally on byte-by-byte comparisons to ensure that the same symbolic reference always matches the same unique data chunk. When "cold" Steelheads exchange data chunks, the chunks are encoded with checksums; the checksums are compared after transmission to check for data corruption. This combination is an improvement over hashing mechanisms that run the risk of occasionally colliding. Further, if the Steelhead on one side receives a reference it no longer understands, or can't reliably reconstruct (because of a checksum mismatch, for example), it will re-request the entire chunk from the Steelhead on the other side.

Third, RiOS doesn't assume that its data dictionary is always current. Returning to our example, suppose ClientA retrieves a file from ServerB. The Steelheads on both ends construct their respective data dictionaries. Now ClientC, in the same branch office as ClientA, retrieves the file. The wrong way to optimize this is for the client-side WAN optimizer to spoof ServerB and immediately return the content. RiOS takes care of this the right way: ClientC's connection is forwarded all the way to ServerB, ServerB returns the file, and the server-side Steelhead evaluates the return traffic patterns. Only if they exactly match the patterns already stored in the dictionary will the Steelhead send the references to the client-side Steelhead, which then returns the corresponding full data chunks to the client.

If you're a long-time Riverbed customer, you probably already understand how SDR and RiOS preserve data integrity. If you're new to Riverbed, or are just looking to learn more, I hope this brief introduction has been useful. We freely admit: we are speed freaks here. But we won't let our passion for performance override our obsession with integrity. So let's go -- fast, and with trust.

Blog Battle: Why public cloud is the future of IT

Today we are trying something different in the blog.  We are posting two articles with differing points of view.  The article below takes the position that Public Cloud is more important than the Private Cloud and should take precedent.  The other article, located here, takes the opposing viewpoint that the Private Cloud is more important should be given priority.  

We hope you will chime in with your comments and opinions in the comments.

Let the Blog Battle begin!

Why public cloud is the future of IT

Why not?  Streamline your infrastructure.  Unless you want to manage an ever-growing pile of applications, servers, and storage, the chances are public cloud offers you a better way.  Hoarding stuff under your roof is so yesterday.

Reason 1 - Cost: The traditional “own” vs. “rent” argument always comes up, but it largely misses the concept of innovation.  The downward spiral is of cyclical binge purchases, struggles to digest all that hardware, and the eventual purge.  Huge capital budgets are wasted on over-priced kit that you’ll outgrow in a couple years anyway. Take your backup storage as an example: how many different tape formats have you bought en masse?  4mm, optical disk, 8mm, DLTI, DLTIII, DLT IV, LTO 3, 4, 5….  Every time a new format came out, you probably blew a ton of cash on new hardware and media.  Don’t even get me started on hallways full of self-proclaimed “redundant” disks.  You’ve been left holding bags full of outdated and possibly unreadable data.  Far more efficient to use operating budgets for cloud services that empower you to provision only what you actually need, on demand when you actually need it. 

 

Reason 2 - Human resources: Meanwhile your staff spends their time on low-value activities like unboxing and racking and wiring and patching and repairing and replacing.  Continuing with the tape storage example, how many man-hours have been spent over the last few decades inventorying and duplicating (again!) and ejecting and off-siting and requesting and waiting for the tape before you can start a restore job?  Is that really how you want your information technology professionals spending their days?  The same class of problem carries into other IT disciplines like apps and servers.

So if you’re going to join us in the 21^st century, why not maximize the efficiency of your infrastructure by adopting public cloud services?  There’s a ton of benefit to gain from virtualizing applications and running them on consolidated infrastructure in a highly automated data center.  Just let someone else spend the capital and manpower to run that cloud data center for you!

-        First, you’re going to need to have a clear picture of what applications you have and how they are connected before making changes like migrating servers into the public cloud. Application-aware network performance management, like Riverbed Cascade, can rapidly build application dependency maps to give you visibility to benchmark performance for multi-tier applications.

-        Next, you’ll need to actually move those applications to your cloud provider’s environment, without disrupting service availability. Global load-balancing capabilities in the Riverbed Stingray Traffic Manager can allow you to rewire applications in the background while maintaining service availability.  Your public cloud service will also benefit from the automation that Stingray provides in increasing application performance and reliability, and support greater server throughput for more efficient usage.  As a cloud appliance, you can easily right-size your Stingray deployment, while taking full advantage of your new infinitely scalable infrastructure.

-        Not least, you can bin the tapes entirely, by backing up to the cloud storage provider of your choice.  Whitewater offers drop-in integration with you current backup software, but encrypts and deduplicates the backup data before storing it safely in the cloud.  You can restore locally for common incidents or from the cloud in a “smoking crater” type disaster.  Win, win.

-        Finally, you’ll need to make sure users can still access applications running in the public cloud… which is probably a greater distance from your end users than local servers and data centers were before. Riverbed’s Steelhead WAN optimization technology minimizes the impact of latency – something that adding bandwidth capacity alone cannot do – so that end-users  anywhere can continue to use applications as if they were local.  As an added benefit, Cloud Steelhead and Steelhead Mobile software can reduce bandwidth consumption by 65-95%, providing efficiency and savings that can be funneled back into the business. 

While most hardware pushers slap on a “private cloud” label to keep you over-buying boxes for your data center, the real efficiency and innovation is coming from the public cloud.  We’ll help you get there!

So who's right?  Which do you think is more important to your organization?  Public or private cloud?  Let us know in the comments.

Autodesk University 2011 recap

Autodesk University was lively this year with over 7000 attendees.  Those of us who attended from Riverbed had the opportunity to sit in on different sessions highlighting the importance of WAN optimization and acceleration to be used in conjunction with Autodesk solutions.

A recent whitepaper that Autodesk published “Speed collaboration using Autodesk Vault and Riverbed WAN Optimization” had the classrooms talking and customers telling their own stories.   With up to 99% reduction in file transfer time noted in the whitepaper, presenter Ross Tanner, Data Management Solutions MFG of Autodesk, said he was “shocked” as he discussed the results in his session “Go Big or Go Home!”.

We also had a chance to present to the Authorized Training Center audience on the show floor, where we discussed breaking the WAN performance barrier to an audience of Autodesk trainers.   Watch the presentation here:

 

 

Slow… SharePoint? Stingray Aptimizer to the Rescue!

Jessica Safiari, Riverbed PR specialist, recently had a creative bug spurred by a triple shot of the recent SharePoint Conference, our Stingray announcement, and possibly from watching too many reruns of Superman films. Either way, enjoy the below short story.   

At the end of the annual Microsoft SharePoint conference, bloggers and journalists came away with the idea of ‘transition’ for the Web-based application. Regardless of the SharePoint changes to come, organizations need to accelerate the application now.

Picture this… It’s a dark, lonely night at the office, and Steve Hairpoint is working late to prepare for the biggest sales meeting of his career. “One more piece of competitive analysis data and I’m calling it a night,” he thought as he logged onto SharePoint. His keystrokes echo in the silent building. He waits for the application to open. The clock ticks slowly. One minute… Two minutes… And then finally, it loads. Tired and frustrated, Steve continues his work. After another half-hour of painfully slow searches for the information he needs, Steve called it quits.

We’ve all been there: working hard on a project and the Web-based application is not cooperating.  When people are forced to wait, the loss of time can be detrimental to potential business opportunities. And in this challenging economy, every opportunity could make or break the organization’s bottom line. Additionally, it is frustrating and impacts user behavior. We invest in these awesome Web-based applications; and sometimes they choke like someone is asking their secret crush on a first date, becoming almost unusable and in a sense reducing employee productivity. 

Luckily, Web-based applications, like SharePoint, now have a superhero to rescue them from the twin perils of heavy weight inefficient content and network limitations like latency. The name is Riverbed Stingray Aptimizer for SharePoint. If Stingray Aptimizer had its own television series, the intro would be:

Stingray Aptimizer laughs in the face of latency as he sits on the web server, boldly accelerating applications and websites, freeing all Web-based applications, like SharePoint from lag time. With Stingray Aptimizer, SharePoint and intranet response times are lightning fast. How can Stingray Aptimizer accomplish such a great feat? The amazing powers of Stingray Aptimizer reduces page load times, reducing bandwidth by instantly transforming the Website content (images, scripts, style sheets, etc.) to create fewer long distance round trips, giving Web-based applications and intranets the defense they need against the evil forces of latency. Our superhero is committed to freeing organizations everywhere of application delays, so they can take on the world and fearlessly pursue business opportunities!

Announcing RiOS 7.0: Batteries Not Included

Today's guest blogger is Joe Ghory, Product Marketing Manager for Riverbed Steelhead Appliances.

In this time of celebration there are three words guaranteed to darken everyone's holiday spirits (no not "Bad Sweater Party").  The phrase that torments this season of giving is even more insidious: “Batteries not Included”. Every December 25 countless would-be revelers pull on parkas over pajamas and go in search of these crucial givers of life.  For the IT community this annual exercise in frustration illustrates an important principle of planning: considerations that may seem secondary to a project can have major consequences.
 
Monday’s release of RiOS 7.0 introduced a series of new features for virtual desktops that highlight the value of considering the impact that seemingly small deployment decisions can have on overall deployments. 

Currently Riverbed customers can overcome the performance barriers to delivering desktop virtualization for organizations utilizing Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop, VMware View, and Microsoft RDP and RemoteFX.  In RiOS 7.0 we added support, for ClientDrive Mapping and ICA over SSL.  For many VDI managers decisions regarding client drive mapping fall below a long list of other considerations associated with a successful VDI roll out.  Unfortunately, what they frequently quickly discover is that when you attempt to interact with a local drive (eg USB stick), it has to read and write across the entire distance from client to host, which can lead to maddeningly slow performance.   Fortunately, with RiOS 7.0 every Who in Whoville can enjoy the benefits of local-like performance despite this distance. 

Performance is also the central focus of our ICA over SSL enhancements in RiOS 7.0.  The introduction of optimization for this deployment architecture means that managers deploying Citrix have even moreflexibility to provide users with a local like desktop experience.
 
When taken in combination with our other existing VDI features, RiOS 7.0 is the gift that keeps on giving brining performance to every good girl and boy in your enterprise.

Announcing RiOS 7.0: Riverbed Connect Podcast

The following is a podcast featuring Bob Gilbert, Director of Marketing, and Naveen Prabhu, Product Marketing Manager for Steelhead Appliances, discussing the new features in RiOS 7.0. 

 

We'll have more coverage of the release of RiOS 7.0 throughout the week.

Announcing RiOS 7.0: A Little Something for Everyone

Today, Riverbed is pleased to announce the release of RiOS 7.0.  Each day this week we'll have a blog article (or two) that discusses the major new features contained in RiOS 7.0. Most of blog articles will be accompanied by a video with additional information about the feature. The press release announcing RiOS 7.0 can be found here.

In the spirit of giving during this Holiday season, Riverbed is pleased to announce RiOS 7.0, the next major release of the intelligent software brain running inside Riverbed’s market leading Steelhead WAN optimization appliances.

The release of RiOS 7 comes at the end of a fantastic 2011 for Riverbed, one in which the company’s flagship Steelhead product continued to gain momentum in the more-than-one-billion-dollar WAN Optimization market.  According to the most recent market share data from Gartner, Steelhead now boasts a commanding 51.7% market share, more than twice the next closest competitor.  For the first time, customers are selecting Steelhead more often than all other competitive alternatives combined.

RiOS 7 is a major step forward for Riverbed, though it has presented a bit of a challenge for our marketing team.  Why?  Generally major releases of RiOS can be characterized by primary themes.  For example, RiOS 6.5 was all about Quality of Service (QoS).  RiOS 6.0 was all about VDI and Citrix ICA optimization.

RiOS 7 is different in that it is comprised of several high-profile, yet equally valuable features and capabilities. Therefore, we’ve elected to use the wide range of features of RiOS 7.0 as its launch theme:  A Little Something for Everyone.

New Features Optimize Applications Customers Care About Most

VIDEO - Let’s start with an industry first for video optimization.  RiOS 7 features native live stream splitting support for Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash, no other vendor in the world supports both.  This will allow the increasing number of companies adopting video to optimize live video streaming over a global network, enabling single streams to travel across the wide area network to regional offices where multiple users can view the live stream from regional branch Steelheads sitting at the edge of the network.

UDP – With RiOS 7, Riverbed is broadening its protocol optimizations to include UDP optimization.  Often used by voice, video and disaster recovery applications, UDP represents a stable, if not growing,  percentage of overall Internet traffic.  With UDP optimization, Riverbed allows organizations to de-duplicate traffic flowing across UDP.  When combined with traditional TCP optimization, Riverbed delivers the most complete WAN optimization offering on the market.

IPv6 – RiOS 7 enables organizations to optimize traffic over IPv6.  While the move to IPv6 has been slower than many first projected, organizations know IPv6 is coming.  For a growing number of organizations, IPv6 is a reality today.

VDI – Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments have long been an area of focus for Riverbed because of the inherent performance challenges that result when separating users from their data over a network.  Today, Riverbed optimizes traffic in Citrix, VMware View and Microsoft Remote FX environments.  New in RiOS 7, Riverbed is adding acceleration and optimization capabilities known as Client Drive Mapping.  With this feature, as users plug thumb drives representing their desktop into thin client devices, Riverbed can accelerate all round trips between the thin client devices and associated centralized destinations.

PRE-POPULATION - Riverbed is enhancing pre-population capabilities over both HTTP and CIFS.  Now, IT professionals can pre-populate a video or file from a centralized location out to distributed locations world-wide, eliminating surges in traffic when content is requested company-wide.  For example, HR professionals can push an entire library of enrollment forms or compliance videos out to regional locations prior to asking employees to sign up for a new program or comply with new regulations.

INTEGRATION  - Integration is a key component of the RiOS 7 release.  Both Cascade Shark and well as Skipware are now natively embedded in Steelhead with RiOS 7.  Cascade Shark on-demand packet capture delivers greater visibility into traffic flowing across corporate networks, while Skipware gives organizations native Satellite optimization capabilities right on the Steelhead appliance.

SECURITY – RiOS 7 optimizes Encrypted Lotus Notes traffic, in addition to Microsoft Online Services traffic, delivering increased performance for messaging and collaboration solutions including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Office Live.  End-to-End Kerberos authentication support has also been added in RiOS 7.

I hope you get a chance to enjoy the “gift” that RiOS 7 is this Holiday season.  We’re quite proud of this release, and look forward to many more in the future.

Don't miss us at Autodesk University 2011

November 29 through December 1st I will be at Autodesk University at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas showcasing Riverbed's stellar results with Autodesk Vault. It has been an absolute pleasure collaborating with the Vault team.

Autodesk Vault is a data management tool which integrates with popular Autodesk products such as Inventor and AutoCAD. It provides a means for tracking files for management as well as version control for various Autodesk formats (dwg, revit) as well as non-Autodesk files (doc, xls). Vault server uses an SQL database backend and the client-server communication is done over HTTP.

Riverbed's HTTP optimization blade fits right into the Vault model providing huge benefits for client-server communication. In addition, we saw some great results in SQL performance over the WAN.

I highly encourage anyone attending the sessions to check out the 'Go Big or Go Home! Part3 - Extending Autodesk Vault to the Enterprise' class taught by Ross Tanner. Ross's class provides some great insights into:

• Configuring Sharepoint for extending Vault data to the enterprise
• Configuring Vault for the enterprise
• Impact of WAN acceleration for Vault optimization
• Describe what the new SharePoint integration can do for your organization

The schedule for Riverbed related talks are

Title	Date	Time	Presenter	Location
Riverbed Technologies – Breaking the WAN performance barrier	Tuesday, Nov 29th 2011	8:10pm	Avinash Shetty	Theater
Go Big or Go Home! Part 3 – Extending Autodesk® Vault to the Enterprise	Wednesday, Nov 30th 2011	10:15am	Ross Tanner	TBA
Riverbed Technologies – Breaking the WAN performance barrier	Wednesday, Nov 30th 2011	12:40pm	Avinash Shetty	Theater

Riverbed is a proud sponsor of the Autodesk University, one of only a handful of companies to do so. Please come by the Presentation Theater where I will be presenting the results of our latest study and a live demo. See you there.

Update 12/1/2011:

The Vault-Riverbed whitepaper is now live on the Autodesk website. We had a great AU2011.

What is this Stingray Traffic Manager, anyway? (Part 2)

In this, our second in a series of videos on the Riverbed Stingray Traffic Manager, Developer Alex Gosse talks about its ability to both balance traffic and monitor traffic loads per service or per user.

 

Riverbed at Akamai Government Forum; Steve Riley to Present on Hybrid Cloud

With initiatives, mandates and reforms in place aimed at bringing efficiencies to government IT, it should be no surprise that over the last few months you’ve seen a lot of Riverbed at government IT conferences and events. After all, our IT performance solutions help government agencies meet initiatives, mandates and reforms – from enabling data center consolidation, to helping reduce costs for IT, and executing on the cloud first policy.

On November 16, Riverbed will be at the Akamai Government Forum, taking place at the Grand Hyatt Washington in Washington, D.C. The second annual Akamai Government Forum will focus on the latest solutions for scaling the Internet infrastructure for local, state and federal government agencies. Visit the Riverbed station to see demos and learn about our cloud performance solutions, including Steelhead WAN optimization, Stingray application delivery and Web content optimization, Cascade application-aware network performance management for traffic visibility, and Whitewater cloud storage gateways for data protection.

And, because you can’t get enough of him, Riverbed technical leader, cloud expert and aficionado Steve Riley will deliver the cloud track discussion on hybrid cloud from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. ET.

In his presentation, Steve will highlight how the performance problems associated with distance computing can be mitigated with optimization techniques designed for multiple layers: application, transport, network and storage.

Here is the teaser:

No longer just the fluff of airplane magazine articles, cloud computing is here to stay. The architectures envisioned for large public cloud providers are revolutionizing on-premises data centers, too. Hybrid clouds – clouds that utilize both public and private resources – allow agencies to spread workloads across multiple locations to satisfy distinct policy, regulatory, security and financial requirements. Hybrid clouds, like their individual counterparts, involve adding distance between users and their data. In most cases, the particular distance at any point in time is unpredictable, which will lead to inconsistent user experiences. Applications deployed in hybrid clouds often move large amounts of data across multiple internal and external providers; long waits for data transfer will affect productivity and availability.

Stop by; learn everything you need to know about optimization, acceleration and performance to meet the government IT mandates; and tell us what you thought of the conference.

 

Riverbed Customer Video - Energy Future Holdings

Michael Taccino, VP of IT & Infrastructure, Energy Future Holdings shares his experience with Riverbed's Steelhead WAN optimization and Cascade visibility products.

 

The importance of agility

 An underappreciated aspect of the Steelhead product line is that it has a diverse set of form factors and – crucially – those different packages all use the same optimization architecture, and thus interoperate. What does that mean for a customer?  It gives tremendous flexibility to adapt to changes in how data and users are distributed, without needing to cause ripple effects elsewhere in the infrastructure.  Let’s consider a simple (and common) example first before we move on to looking at the larger implications. 

Organizations often have some branch offices that are very small.  For the very smallest offices and individual users, it’s usually not hard to decide that the right solution is to use Steelhead Mobile on a laptop or workstation.  And when you get to  10-12 people in an office, both the technology and the ROI arguments for a Steelhead appliance (physical or virtual) are pretty easy to make.  But there’s an area in the middle, around 5-6 users, where there’s enough overlap of capabilities that either approach could work.  Add to this that a given office may grow or shrink enough so that the original configuration in the office may need to be replaced with a different one.

 Using the Steelhead family, these choices and changes at the branch can be accommodated with no additional impact on the data center side.  For a given workload from a given set of users, it just doesn’t matter whether they’re coming from a Steelhead appliance or Steelhead Mobile. 

 Now, if you’re only familiar with Riverbed, at this point your reaction is probably something like “so what?  Big deal!”  But let’s look at just this one scenario with the #2 vendor: their mobile client doesn’t use the same technology as their appliance, so you have to have two separate data-center infrastructures to support the branches if you have a mixture of the technologies.  And as you migrate a given branch from appliance to mobile or vice-versa, you’re changing the load on the corresponding data-center pieces. 

 That divided-technology approach means that it’s easy with the #2 vendor to be in a situation where an apparently-straightforward change at a branch gets tripped up because it exceeds the capacity of some piece of data center infrastructure.  Another layer of complexity comes from the fact that these two different technologies have different network characteristics: their appliance uses an autodiscovery mechanism somewhat like the way that Steelheads work, while their mobile client needs an explicit connection set up to its data-center counterpart.  Their appliance marketing repeatedly insists on the necessity of transparency and the avoidance of tunnels, while the mobile client uses a tunnel-based system – so it’s possible that a particular branch network configuration that works with one of the technologies simply won’t work with the other.

 It’s tempting to say that the divided-technology problem of the #2 vendor is just a typical lapse by a very large company, and that smaller competitors would have a better approach. So we look at the #3 vendor in our space, which is a private company that prides itself on only doing WAN optimization.  But they don’t have any mobile client at all!  So their theory is that you should just pretend that you don’t need WAN optimization when you’re out on the road and dealing with networks in coffee shops and hotels – exactly the opposite of most real-world experience.  And apparently when your branch is too small to support an appliance or virtual appliance, you should just stop using WAN optimization.  (All of a sudden, the #2 vendor looks really good by comparison.)

Before we leave this topic, it’s worth noting that the preceding comparison actually understates the Riverbed advantage. A further advantage comes from the fact that Steelhead Mobile and a Steelhead appliance (physical or virtual) can cooperate via branch warming. In branch warming, Steelhead Mobile and a local Steelhead appliance work together: each time a piece of "optimization vocabulary" is used by the machine running Steelhead Mobile, the mobile client and the appliance coordinate so that both have a copy.  As the mobile client is used in the branch office, their vocabularies will tend to converge.

Without spending too much time on the details of how it works, let’s talk about where it’s useful:  Sometimes there are enough people in an office to justify an appliance, but the nature of the work means that some or all of them have a significant need for mobility – often because they are salespeople, hands-on repair technicians, or field supervisors.  They can use Steelhead Mobile when they are on the road, but they stop needing a mobile license when they’re in the office, and they take the benefits of their office work (newly learned optimizations) back on the road with them when they leave. 

 Now let’s talk about the bigger picture of why this matters.  After all, your organization may not have small branches or mobile users, so that set of examples might not impress you. But the same general principle of agility through a common architecture is more broadly useful, and almost certainly can make a difference to your organization now or in a future configuration.

 A way of getting a handle on this is to list out the different “packages” of Steelhead technology:

• Physical appliance
• Virtual appliance
• Cluster of appliances (physical and/or virtual)
• Software client
• Cloud-integrated service
• “Blade” for HP switch

 All of these interoperate with each other – so it’s easy to go “physical to virtual” or vice-versa without needing to disrupt the other side of the application.  Likewise it’s easy to have a set of services growing beyond the capacity of a single appliance, or migrating into (or out of) a cloud service, without prompting a redesign or redeployment of the client side.

 Again, a comparison with the #2 vendor is illuminating. A casual examination of their WAN optimization product line would suggest a similar kind of breadth and agility. They have a variety of packages of WAN optimization technology. But it turns out that the commonality is more marketecture than architecture.  That is, they use a common branding for what are actually 3 very-different classes of products: what we might call “main”, “mobile”, and “express.”  The “mobile” products can’t interoperate at all with “main” products or with “express” products.  The “main” products and “express” products can interoperate, but only at the lower level of function supported by the “express” products.  So actually trying to use the #2 vendor products for Riverbed-like agility can lead to all sorts of unpleasant surprises, as WAN optimization functionality either doesn’t work at all (mobile/main and mobile/express combinations) or works with sharply reduced functionality and performance (main/express combinations).

IT organizations need agility and flexibility to meet changing circumstances and demands.  The Riverbed single common architecture approach for WAN optimization helps ensure that Steelhead technology can help meet that need.

Video: Application Performance in the Cloud

Bob Gilbert sits down with Zeus Kerravala from the Yankee Group to discuss application performance in the cloud.

 

 

Riverbed Technical Leader Steve Riley Q&A on Distributed Recentralization

Thank you for tuning in to the Federal IT Q&A series with Steve Riley, our friend for all things cloud. With this episode, we're wrapping up the series with one question and one answer. 

The question: what does the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, Cloud First policy, data protection, mobility and telework, and desktop virtualization, have in common?

The answer: Distributed recentralization. In the below video, Steve provides a history on the computing models we've experienced (i.e., mainframe, client-server and centralized computing), and talks about the direction we're moving towards - distributed recentralization. The trend is that we're moving to fewer but larger data centers. And, compared to centralized computing (creation, access and process happening in one place), with distributed decentralization, access and creation are happening in one place, and processing and storage are happening in another place. Also, with fewer data centers, these two activities are occurring at even greater distances in the past ten years. 

This is why adding a layer of intelligence to networks is critical.

 

Actually, there is one more question. What topics — within the realm of IT performance — would you like to see from us?  

 

Optimizing Your Global Infrastructure for SharePoint – Part 1

SharePoint is an amazingly rich and robust solution that has taken off like a rocket.  However, SharePoint’s performance isn’t always perceived as rocket fast by remote users.  Many times organizations forget not everyone is at HQ sitting around the corner from the SharePoint servers…where they have virtually unlimited bandwidth and only 1 – 2 milliseconds of latency.  In most global organizations employees are at remote sites far away from the SharePoint servers…where they have limited bandwidth and much higher latency.  This limited bandwidth and higher latency correlates to a slower user experience and subsequently lower productivity.

In this multi-part blog post we will discuss how your organization can optimize your infrastructure to ensure your employees get a very fast SharePoint experience – no matter where they are.

One of the first tasks most large global organizations will want to undertake is understanding how their SharePoint environment overlays the infrastructure.  Cascade’s dependency mapping, performance monitoring, multi-tier service maps, transaction analysis and other capabilities empower organizations to better understand, consolidate, support and troubleshoot global SharePoint environments.  For example it can help answer questions such as:

• Where are my SharePoint Servers? > Are any of them unauthorized, or at remote sites and need to be consolidated?
• Which sites/users connect to which servers? > How fast is their experience? > Which users are the most disadvantaged?
• How many of my SharePoint users connect from the Internet/VPN versus internally?
• How many objects make up specific web pages? > Which objects are the largest/slowest? > How much delay is on the server versus the network?
• What backend servers do my SharePoint web servers connect to and depend upon?
• Are the SharePoint/IIS servers authenticating to a local Domain Controller for all users, or are they unexpectedly hitting a remote Domain Controller for some users?
• How much bandwidth does my crawling of regional SharePoint sites consume? > Is it impacting business applications?
• How much backup traffic does SharePoint generate?  Which path does it take to the DR/COOP Site?

Now that we understand SharePoint globally it is time to start strategizing how to improve performance.  There are several ways to approach this and priorities will depend on your organization’s goals.  In this series we’ll take the approach that user productivity and application availability take priority over infrastructure optimization. 

The fastest and easiest way to optimize general user experience and productivity within SharePoint is to optimize the content being served up.  To accomplish this Stingray Aptimizer, formerly Aptimize, has consistently been found by SharePoint administrators to be the solution of choice. It makes web pages pages 30 – 75% faster, increases server throughput, and takes only a few hours to fully configure and start improving performance.  Plus you can kick the tires for free prior to making a decision. 

Stingray Aptimizer is loaded on the SharePoint web server as a Runtime Page Optimizer (RPO). 
It improves performance by file merging, dynamic layout, compression, caching and more so that users see the page significantly faster. This results in fewer objects, fewer authentication turns, more use of the browser’s cache, lower network utilization and less load on the server infrastructure.  It has a huge impact on productivity and encourages users to engage SharePoint even more.  For third-party validation read about how Microsoft uses Stingray Aptimizer on their own SharePoint site.  

For the uber-geek here are live reports from www.webpagetest.org so you can compare optimized and non-optimized performance of Microsoft's SharePoint site.

Homepage 

    Aptimizer enabled: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/111028_P8_20Q3G/

    Aptimizer disabled: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/111028_16_20Q6X/

Customer page 

    Aptimizer enabled: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/111028_KC_20QM5/

    Aptimizer disabled: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/111028_ZR_20Q3E/

If you’re a visual person here are two great videos about Stingray Aptimizer:

1)    How It Works

2)    How to Install, Configure & Deploy

Wondering how much faster your SharePoint could be?  What are you waiting for? Give Stingray Aptimizer a try for free today.

In the next post of this series we’ll discuss how Stingray Traffic Manager and Application Firewall intelligently load balance, scale and protect global SharePoint environments.

 

Video: Riverbed is looking for SaaS acceleration beta customers

Riverbed is looking for customers that are interested in extending their Steelhead WAN optimization to SaaS applications such as Office 365, Salesforce.com, and Google Apps.

This groundbreaking technology is a joint effort from both Riverbed and Akamai and for existing Steelhead customers, it requires no new hardware. If you are interested in participating in the SaaS acceleration beta, please email Bob Gilbert: bob@riverbed.com.

 

Stingray Traffic Manager Overview Video

Owen Garrett, Director of Product Management for Riverbed's Stingray line of asymmetric optimization products, provides an overview of the Stingray Traffic Manager.

 

 

We love developers!

If you’re no stranger to the Riverbed blog, any of our other social media outlets, or even our web site, by now you’re aware of our new acceleration offerings. Keen observers (and we know you’re all keen!) will note these products depart from our traditional symmetric optimization history. We’ve already discussed why we believe this matters. I’d like to write a bit about to whom it does.

We realize that an IT organization comprises more than those who build the networks and shepherd equipment that routes datagrams. All of that infrastructure would be unnecessary if it weren’t for the applications they run and the data they move about. And while plenty of great technology choices can help the network guys discover and accelerate their prized datagrams, developers, too, can benefit from tools and techniques that improve the speed of their code and the availability of their data.

As a developer, you’re continually trying to balance conflicting demands. Your code must run fast, function correctly, contain no vulnerabilities, and reuse other elements where possible—all, of course, on schedule. At times, some of these demands give way to others—that’s just reality. Aligning resources to meet a release date with full functionality might require constraining resources available for optimizing your code’s performance. That’s where we can help.

Our Stingray line of products is designed specifically to ease the pressure to tightly optimize your code. It can also help you eliminate the worries of deploying code that you acquired elsewhere and are unable to modify it to streamline its performance. Whether you need to improve the response time of a single SharePoint server or rapidly distribute high-performing applications across multiple geographic locations, we at Riverbed realize that you, our new developer audience, deserve the same kind of high-quality attention to your needs as we’ve provided our networking friends for years.

We encourage you to explore our new application-oriented performance offerings. Then, take a walk downstairs (it’s almost always downstairs, isn’t it?) and chat with your buddies in the networking department. They might look kind of scary, but they’re cool people—I promise, I used to be one of them! Swap some stories about how eliminating performance bottlenecks has helped your organization rise above your competitors. And work together to ensure that your entire IT stack—from the datagrams to the data—perform at the speed of 21st century business.

Riverbed 101 - An introduction video to Riverbed's products

Bob Gilbert gives a high level overview of Riverbed's products.

 

 

Riverbed Technical Leader Steve Riley Q&A on Desktop Virtualization

For this week's Federal IT Q&A with Steve Riley, we examine the considerations for agencies looking to deploy desktop virtualization, the associated considerations, the drivers, user behaviors, applications, as well as how Riverbed solutions play a critical role in ensuring the best possible user experience. 

To kick things off, Steve breaks it down about what are some of the drivers for VDI. Simply put, the consumerization of IT is high on the list. An agency can allow agents to bring in their own gear, or purchase -- with a budget -- gear, and then provide and manage a virtual desktop with applications securely. From an IT and budgetary perspective, desktop virtualization allows agencies to not have to purchase devices, manage and refresh them.

Virtual desktop is also truly enabling the dual use personal-professional device. And, as you may expect, iPads and Android-based tablets are the devices of choice. But, the beauty of VDI is it is device independent.

So, what is the Riverbed play? How is Riverbed accelerating virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)? Earlier this year, we announced continued and enhanced support for Citrix XenDesktop. At around the same time, we announced an optimization solution for Microsoft RemoteFX. And, at VMworld in the summer, we announced an upcoming partnership with Teradici, the innovator of the PC-over-IP protocol. Clearly a lot of developments around VDI with more to come.  

If you have been keeping count, then you'll know that we're approaching the end of the Federal IT Q&A series with Riverbed technical leader Steve Riley. Next week, tune in for a recap and finale discussion on how everything we discussed (data center consolidation, cloud computing, data protection, mobility and teleworking, and desktop virtualization) is tied together. 

But for now, watch the below video Q&A with Steve.

 

 

Riverbed in Orlando, Florida at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2011

Riverbed will demonstrate its IT performance leadership at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2011, taking place October 16-20 at the Walt Disney Dolphin in Orlando, Florida. Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the IT industry's largest and most strategic conference, providing business leaders with a look at the future of IT. Attendees can visit Riverbed® (booth# 309) to learn about the company’s IT performance solutions, which have been selected by more than 13,000 organizations to help consolidate IT infrastructure and reduce costs while increasing employee collaboration and productivity.

Conference attendees can learn about the Riverbed product families. In addition to its core WAN optimization solutions, Riverbed will showcase its wide range of IT performance solutions spanning application-aware network performance management (NPM), application delivery and web content optimization (WCO), and cloud data protection for back up, archive, and disaster recovery.

 

Riverbed in Austin, Texas at Dell World 2011

If you plan to attend Dell World from October 12–14 in Austin, Texas, then come and visit the Riverbed booth to learn about Riverbed and Dell solutions that enable customers to optimize the performance of their IT infrastructure.

As businesses, from SMB to large enterprises, continue to innovate the way they do business and adopt leading solutions for virtualization and cloud, CIOs are examining cost-effective technologies to satisfy their requirements. Moving data and applications to the cloud, data center to data center replication and disaster recovery are all key initiatives affected by virtualization and cloud computing.

Riverbed and Dell have been collaborating as strategic partners to bring IT performance solutions to customers. Specifically, Riverbed Steelhead products with Dell EqualLogic storage help optimize WAN-based iSCCI data replication. Have a read at the solution brief here. And, Riverbed Steelhead with Dell Compellent storage, delivers accelerated disaster recovery operations and increased data protection. Read more in the Compellent and Riverbed solution brief.

How are have customers deployed Riverbed and Dell, together? Here are some customer examples, from Minnwest Bank and Constangy, Brooks, & Smith, LLP.

 

David Michel from Burr Forman

David Michel, CIO of Burr Forman, a mid-sized law firm located in the Southeastern US, talks about how Riverbed products have helped make him and his firm more successful and more efficient.  They are able to bring on new lawyers faster, add offices, and support lawyers who work outside their offices better than ever before.

David spoke at Interop NYC, on October 6, 2011.

 

 

Enhancing your applications for mobile device access

I recently came across a fantastic infographic courtesy of Microsoft Tag that highlights some very interesting statistics on how people are using mobile devices in 2011 and the possible impacts on mobile marketing.

The element of the infographic that really grabbed my attention was ‘how fast is mobile internet growing?’ According to the graph mobile internet usage is projected to overtake desktop internet usage by 2015.

So, why should we care about this projected growth?

As an increasing number of organizations look to offer their services online the requirement to have an online presence that performs and meets the expectations of customers no matter what type of device (and not just the trusty old desktop) they are using, is now even more important than ever.

If more of us are going to use mobile devices in the future as the preferred way to access the applications that support these online services, this will have implications on the way those applications are developed and designed to provide the best possible level of performance. According to a recent article in ClickZ, research shows a simple 1 second delay could result in 7 percent fewer conversions, 11 percent fewer page views, and even a 16 percent decrease in customer satisfaction – not something your organization is going to want to experience.

So, wouldn’t it be helpful to understand which mobile devices visitors are using to access your applications and online services and in-turn help understand how to tailor applications for the best possible level of performance? However, as we all know, the number of devices with different capabilities and the frequency with which they come onto the market is quite amazing. For example, a recent article published on the Rimm-Kaufman Group blog shows that in its last quarter Apple sold 9.25 million ipads which is an increase year on year of 183%.

So, how can an organization keep pace with this change?

Well, thanks to Luca Passani at WURFL (Wireless Universal Resource File) and his contributors, including individuals from a number of the carriers, there is a way! WURFL is a global database of all devices and their capabilities. This file can be accessed by developers so that they can build applications and services that perform better for their users when using certain mobile devices including those from Apple.

For those of you who are already using Zeus’ software-ADC solution for intelligently managing their web-based application traffic, Luca and his contributors offer a Java API. This means that those responsible for writing and developing applications can now build this type of mobile device application enhancement on their application delivery solution.

The data provided by WURFL and the use of a software-ADC like Zeus can help organizations overcome a number of issues. Let's finish with one issue in particular. How can an organization ensure that the performance experienced by those using mobile devices is not compromised due to the resolution of the content being delivered back to them? Well, by identifying which mobile devices visitors are using, the organization can then make an informed decision on the resolution of the content that is delivered back. This will help ensure that the content being requested is delivered back as quickly as possible, resulting in improved page load times.

If the projected increase in mobile internet usage becomes reality, how confident is your organization that the performance experienced by those using mobile devices to access your online services is not compromised?

Image source: Microsoft Tag

All Sharepoint. All the time.

Recently, a lot of my work has been focusing on Microsoft SharePoint 2010.  I wanted to take a moment to blog about two recent related efforts:

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 interoperability testing in Redmond

Riverbed Steelhead appliances have been optimizing Microsoft applications since the beginning, but we are getting a fresh look at improving our protocol optimization by working directly with the Microsoft Interoperability Team at the Microsoft Partner Solutions Center in Redmond, WA.  Riverbed has a lab there that we use to work with customers, but now it's great to work with Microsoft directly to get both technical teams working together.

A special thanks goes out to HP, who provided the servers and network hardware for our interoperability lab.

Riverbed booth at Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011

From the lab, I go on the road to the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 in Aneheim, CA.  Our booth will be showcasing Riverbed Steelheads and the Aptimize SharePoint Accelerator.  In and out of the cloud, from document management to complete searchable websites, Microsoft SharePoint 2010 redefines the collaborative environment.  Riverbed Technology enables that capability on the WAN.

Look for the Riverbed Technology booth at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 from Oct 3-6.  Conference information can be found at http://www.mssharepointconference.com .

We're at Interop Mumbai. Are you?

Interop Mumbai starts today at the Bombay Exhibition Center in Goregaon, Mumbai, India, and Riverbed is all over it.  We're a Gold Sponsor of the show, our own Naveen Prabhu spoke earlier today on Application Acceleration, and, of course, you can find us in the vendor exhibition in booth #7. 

At the booth, we have our Presentation Theater, where you can see a demonstration of WAN Optimization and other Riverbed products, as shown in the photo at left.

If you do stop by, be sure to mention that you read about it on the Riverbed Blog.

And if you can't make it to Mumbai, come see us at Interop New York, which starts Monday.  Riverbed is also a Gold Sponsor of the NY event.  We have five speakers, and our booth with the Presentation Theater. We'll have more details on Monday.

We look forward to seeing you at one or both of these exciting events!

 

Riverbed Technical Lead Steve Riley Q&A on Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative

It's the final countdown – not only for 2011 Federal Fiscal Year, but also for a major phase in the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI), which is integral to the 25-point plan for reforming federal IT. By September 30, officials at federal agencies are required to complete their data center consolidation plans and to-date progress reports. The following week, the plans will be posted to CIO.gov. And, every quarter, agencies must post data centers they plan to close, as well as provide an update on what has already been closed or consolidated. A list of the data centers planned for closure to date is available here.

If you're not familiar with the FDCCI, which was launched in February 2010, the high-level on this initiative is federal agencies are required to close 800 of the U.S. government’s 2,094 data centers by 2015. To make good on that goal, 373 federal data centers will be closed by the end of 2012. 

Why is there a push to consolidate data centers? One of the key objectives is to save $3 billion annually, mainly from gaining efficiencies in energy consumption, maintenance and management of data centers. Another objective is to gain IT efficiencies across agencies and foster greater collaboration. But, this should not be done at the cost of performance, especially to the user experience.

Today's video kicks-off the first in a series of video interviews, in which I ask Steve for his perspective on a federal IT initiative – FDCCI, cloud first and cloud computing, data protection, telework and mobility, and desktop virtualization — what should federal IT leads take into consideration, and how Riverbed address challenges around IT performance for helping ensure success.

Below is the first video interview on data center consolidation. Steve discussed key areas of consideration for how to determine which data centers to consolidation based on applications and information type. He also outlined the challenges associated with moving applications and information farther away from a user, as well as how to ensure that the user experience is optimized, let alone not affected. The takeaway: when data centers are further dispersed across great distances, yet the user is staying put or they are used to accessing an application that is located on-premises, then the WAN becomes even more critical. In order to make FDCCI a success, and not impact the user experience, then federal IT leaders will want agents to feel like the application is hosted locally. In short, Riverbed accelerates the movement of data, information and applications, and eliminates latency that is often associated with computing over great distances. Why is this a consideration? With all the strides to bring efficiencies and reduce costs, ensuring that an agent's productivity is not impacted should also be tops on the list of considerations.

 

Be sure to tune in every week over the coming several weeks for more interviews with Steve.

 

The WAN of Your Dreams

Look, I know it isn't easy. Nobody likes to put themselves out there, face the fear of the unknown. Why rock the boat, right? You're probably thinking to yourself, "I'm happy with my WAN. It's a decent, hard-working WAN. Sure, there are problems, but no WAN is perfect." Now tell me something, don't you think you deserve better? Don't you deserve a WAN that makes you truly happy?

Imagine a WAN that goes above and beyond for you. A WAN that doesn't make you wait an interminable 30 seconds every time you transfer a file. A WAN that doesn't hinder your consolidation efforts with it's insufferable latency. A WAN that gives you superior application performance without dictating where your servers are?  This isn't too much to ask. 

The Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS)

The Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS) is the only solution within the WAN optimization industry to  utilize four different technologies to create your perfect WAN. RiOS software powers Steelhead products through a combination of patent-pending data reduction, TCP optimization, and application-level protocol optimizations. Together, these technologies provide a comprehensive solution for true WAN compatibility. (Streamlining descriptions excerpted from the Riverbed Steelhead Product Family data sheet).

1. Data Streamlining

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, email, CAD, ERP, web-based HTTP and HTTPS applications, databases, virtual desktops, and all other applications that use TCP.

 

2. Transport Streamlining

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.

3. Application Streamlining

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 optimizations performed on all TCP traffic.

4. Management Streamlining

Management streamlining – RiOS enables easy deployment through auto-discovery of peers and auto-interception of traffic, with no reconfiguration of clients, servers, or routers. 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. 

Riverbed is committed to helping you find the WAN of your dreams, and with over 10,000 customers, we are confident that we can.  So begin your Riverbed experience register today for a free trial. After all, over 80 of the Fortune 100 can't be wrong. Hurry, your perfect WAN is waiting!

Bandwidth Confessionals

Hello Riverbed followers...my name is Sabrina and I just recently joined the Riverbed blogging team. I am a business development rep, as part of the corporate sales team, in San Francisco. My day consists of calling prospective customers and uncovering opportunities for our regional sales managers in the Southeast region (I'm that person who calls and interrupts your workday to find out if you are interested in Riverbed's solutions).  I'm very excited to be contributing to our blog and hope you will enjoy my perspective and insights. Now, without further ado, my first post...

 

I'm going to ask you a question and I want an honest answer. This is a safe space, no judgement here.  Ok, ready?  Have you ever upgraded your bandwidth , even though you knew it wasn't going to solve your latency problems? 

If you said yes, it's okay. Everybody has done it and it's nothing to be ashamed of. Your intentions were good, and besides, it gave you a reprieve from all those user complaints. But then, after awhile, they started again, didn't they? 

And now you are right back where you started from, thinking about going back to bandwidth. Do you really think things will be different this time? Sure, there will be the honeymoon period, but eventually you will be right back where you started, broken promises and shattered dreams. I'm begging you, don't do it, don't go back to bandwidth!

As much as you want it to, bandwidth will not solve your problems. I know it's comfortable, it's safe,   everybody knows bandwidth, but it's not right for you. Is bandwidth going to address all those TCP applications whose chatty behavior is causing your end users to waste valuable time waiting for apps to load or files to transfer? And do you honestly believe bandwidth will ever be able to address the latency problem? I don't care how big your pipe is, those applications still need to go back and forth across the WAN and having more space will only make their trip more comfortable, not faster.

Imagine you have to transport 100 of your employees from HQ to a remote office that is 3,000 miles away. You want to get all of them there as quickly as possible. You have two travel options:

1) A volkswagon bug and a four-lane high way, or... 

2) A Greyhound bus and a single lane highway.

Option 2 right? It's a no-brainer. The situation is no different with your WAN. Upgrading bandwidth is like choosing option 1 and implementing a WAN optimization solution is like choosing option 2.

 

What about cost you say?    This chart shows the  calculations done by the law firm Allen Matkins. They found that "the cost of deploying the Riverbed Steelhead solution would be 70% less expensive than the cost of implementing a bandwidth upgrade. Annual operating costs for the Riverbed Steelhead solution are a staggering 88% less expensive than the bandwidth upgrade.(Case Study: AllenMatkins).

I'm glad we were able to have this little chat today. I care about you,everybody here at Riverbed cares, and we don't want to see you go back to bandwidth. You deserve so much better.

 

Calculate your companies potential bandwidth savings by using our ROI Calculator

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aptimize: Supercharging Your SharePoint Performance!

Do you have issues with Microsoft SharePoint environment performance?  While SharePoint is an amazing collaboration tool with loads of rich features, oftentimes long distances and bandwidth limitations can get in the way of delivering the best possible SharePoint experience to remote workers. 

No one likes to wait, and delays will drive users’ behavior.  If SharePoint is too slow, dissatisfied employees won’t use it as much as they could, might open IT tickets in complaint, or may even abandon it entirely.  This can result in productivity losses and missed opportunities in SharePoint deployments.  What to do?
 
Enter Riverbed!
 
Steelhead WAN optimization has been able to improve SharePoint performance for branch office workers with data reduction, HTTP protocol features, and even application specific tuning to accelerate authentication for example.
 
Now complementing Steelhead is our new Aptimize web content optimization software, which can immediately deliver additional performanceimprovements when installed on the SharePoint server.  Aptimize also has the advantage of being able to optimize asymmetrically (nothing required on the client side!)

 
Aptimize will help SharePoint by:

• Merging web page files for fewer roundtrips
• Shrinking and compressing these files to reduce data quantity
• Increasing browser caching to reduce reload times
• Tuning the page layout to display first things first

 
The results speak for themselves:

• Up to 76% reduction in load times
• Up to 43% less traffic
• AND happier and more productive SharePoint users

 So whether you are a Steelhead customer today or new to Riverbed and looking for a fresh approach, here’s your chance to supercharge your SharePoint environment!
 
Reach out to your local Riverbed representative to learn more.

The Challenges with Mobility and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

As a commuter heading into San Francisco on BART for the past several years,  I feel as though I have actually witnessed a revolution. 

Just a few years ago, the common commuter either slept, read (books, newspapers, magazines), or stared in the distance.  Occasionally someone might take or make a call, or possibly send a text or two (I loved my nokia 8210, so small!).  

Today, however, the most common pose is a near constant stare at our smart phones or connected device.

I’m as guilty as the next person, pounding away updates on my Blackberry.  But the behavioral change is fascinating to me. Will it always  be like this?  Is this just a phase or are we forever committing to our screens?

Sidestepping the discussion about whether or not you think smartphones actually make us dumb, the proliferation of devices has got me thinking about the impact these devices have on IT. 

The challenge of mobile devices was particularly evident at an event I attended a few weeks ago, it was a customer advisory council meeting for a very successful regional value added reseller (VAR) in the Southeast.  The company had assembled 15 of their top customers to discuss best practices and new technologies.

By a show of hands, the greatest challenge the group faced was the explosion of end user devices and the impact the devices were having on corporate networks and on IT support.  One attendee discussed how their organization had gone so far to embrace end user choice that their company actually issues a hardware/device stipend to all new employees rather than supplying a laptop or desktop. The end user could buy the laptop, phone or pad of their choice, while IT focused on providing support and making sure their networks could handle surging amounts of traffic.

All this lead to a very lengthy discussion about Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) - (you can find some very honest and comprehensive discussions about VDI here).  VDI is a topic near and dear to Riverbed customers since at the core of the VDI concept is the explicit separation of end users from their data. And as we’ve learned from client-server applications that run over wide area networks, any time you separate end users from their data, especially over great distances, performance can really suffer, and WAN optimization technology is required to deliver the level of performance users demand.

Based on some partner and customer research I conducted earlier this year, I found that today’s most successful VDI deployments take place on local area networks (LAN), often deployed in a single facility or campus.  Education, Government agencies, and various types of financial service companies are particularly attracted to VDI’s promise of controlled, single instance data.  And while early desktop virtualization pitches promoted the cost benefits of VDI, many studies have since shown the cost benefits are minimal.  The real primary attraction of VDI is the age-old IT attraction of centralized control.

However, the challenge of VDI is most evident is over wide area networks (WAN).  If you’ve ever been frustrated by a pause in sending an e-mail or opening an application in a traditional corporate office, try sitting across a WAN from your data on a dumb terminal when you begin to experience slow or inconsistent K..EY..S.T…ROKE..S, forget it, it’s the worst. VDI over the WAN is a real challenge, which is why Riverbed is spending so much time and energy on the subject.  Today, we already optimize the Citrix ICA protocol and we help our customers optimize VMware view deployments as well using RDP optimization. 

During his keynote at Citrix Synergy in May, Citrix CEO Mark Templeton discussed a future where users would enjoy device and network independence.  I think we’re still a ways off from that, but I’m certain Riverbed will help the world get there. 

And for all my fellow BART commuters staring at your phones, just be thankful there are companies like Riverbed hard at work optimizing your corporate and public networks so you don’t miss a post, tweet, blog, text, request e-mail, video….

Did you know Worldwide smart phone shipments increased 87% in the last 12 months

 

Riverbed's Optimization Solutions for the Cloud

Recently I saw a blog post on ReadWriteWeb / Cloud by David Strom where he described the roles that WAN Optimization can play in helping accelerate Cloud-based IT services.

This has long been an area of attention at Riverbed; for years now we have been helping Enterprises address and solve the challenges they've faced with business applications performing poorly across their private WANs. Riverbed's award-winning Steelhead family of WAN Optimization appliances have held a leading position in the global market for the last several years, according to several leading industry analyst firms.

Now, in the era of Cloud-based IT services, the performance problems created by the increased distance between users and their data, combined with the lack of QoS and un-guaranteed internet performance are significantly worse than those faced within a structured and well-known corporate IT environment. Thus the need for performance optimization in these cloud environments is even greater than in traditional, private corporate IT.

These requirements have prompted Riverbed to develop and offer a whole range of products and technologies, to address the vast majority of Cloud-based IT applications and environments. In his recent blog post,  David mentioned only one Riverbed product in this context, the Steelhead Appliance.  

In addition to this though Riverbed also has the following products available to address the Acceleration & Optimization needs of virtual and cloud environments :

1. Virtual Steelhead - as the name suggests, a virtual version of the Steelhead product that can be run on VMWare ESX/ESXi platforms
2. Cloud Steelhead - Steelhead WAN Optimization + simple portal-based management, On-demand instantiation, easy cloning, fliexible sizing and pricing
3. Riverbed Whitewater - a single-ended Cloud Storage Gateway that delivers speed, security, cost-efficiency and ease of use for Cloud-based storage services and of course
4. Steelhead Mobile - PC and MAC client acceleration software, so you can enjoy accelerated cloud IT services from anywhere, over any connectivity medium.

Additionally with the recent acquisition of both Zeus and Aptimize, Riverbed now also has two new Single-Ended technologies - Application Delivery Controller and Web Content Optimization - to help accelerate  both public and private cloud-based web content and applications.

So in summary, Riverbed really should be your first port of call for any cloud IT service acceleration & optimization requirements.

Optimizing Anti-Virus Updates with Riverbed

Implementing an anti-virus platform can be a strain on your network when the PCs you are aiming to protect require frequent virus definition updates from a central location.  Riverbed's Steelhead family of WAN optimization products performs well when it comes to minimizing the impact that anti-virus software has on your wide area network.  Steelhead can dramatically reduce the amount of data traversing your WAN for the initial anti-virus deployment as well as the frequent follow-on updates that take place.

Thanks to Riverbed Channel SE Emmanual Forgues, below are the results from deploying Riverbed in an environment where Kapersky ant-virus is configured.

The setup is pretty straightforward and involves a branch office connecting to a datacenter over a 2Mbps WAN link with 80ms RTT latency.  

 
The first test is the initial deployment of the Kapersky anti-virus platform from the server in the datacenter to the workstation in the branch office. 

As you can see from the above Steelhead appliance report, 43% of the traffic for the initial anti-virus deployment was eliminated from the WAN.  This is essentially the effect of applying on-the-fly LZ compression to the data.

The next step is to attempt the same deployment now that the Steelhead appliances have seen the data.

 
 

  The result is 96% data reduction!  The next test is to attempt an anti-virus update for the first time.

 

27% data reduction on the first pass.  Now let's try another update.

60% data reduction or only 98.3MB was transferred over the WAN out of 47.7MB of possible data.  To summarize, both anti-virus deployments and follow on definition updates can be receive a tremendous amount of optimization by Riverbed.

This was a test using Kapersky Anti-Virus.  Riverbed customers are seeing similar results with other products such as McAfeee and Symantec. Regardless of your anti-vrisu platform, Riverbed can be an essential part of your anti-virus deployment strategy. 

 

Flow International Corporation: Disaster Recovery in near real time from Riverbed

With a centralized ERP system and three-quarters of its business coming from outside the United States,  Flow International Corporation needed to improve ERP access for remote users. It also needed to ensure the integrity of its disaster recovery processes, which use EMC RecoverPoint and Microsoft Data Protection Manager and generate terabytes of data that must travel over the company’s WAN.

By deploying Steelhead WAN optimization appliances at its headquarters, disaster recovery center and major regional data centers worldwide, Flow International ensures speedy access to the ERP system from its international offices. The Riverbed solution also optimizes the company’s disaster recovery operations.

The data compression performed by the Steelhead appliances complements that done by RecoverPoint. Replication traffic (both RecoverPoint and DPM) has been optimized by 95 percent. Originally, Flow set a goal of replicating the ERP data within 30 minutes. The company now replicates that data in five seconds. Overall Flow International has experienced a total data reduction on the WAN of 86 percent and has realized a 7.94 times optimized bandwidth capacity increase.

You can read the whole story here.

Your 3AM friend

It’s 3am, you are putting the finishing touches on your latest deployment of a virtual appliance via Riverbed Services Platform, and your shining glory is Checkpoint Firewall in a remote branch.  You’re going to sleep much better at night knowing that your little branch computers are sleeping safe at night with a big bad firewall protecting it.  You have the firewall running, you are able to ping the management interface, and you are preparing to put the device inline, but.... 

You think, “if I put the firewall inline, how am I going to put both interfaces in at the same time.  I sure am glad I thought about this because I was just about to blackhole this site.”  Now you think to yourself, how am I going to get this firewall inline, without being behind the firewall?

Well, your 3am friend is the job command.  Job is a CLI command that invokes the Scheduler within the Steelhead.  There isn’t a GUI equivalent for this, but don’t be scared, this is an easy command to master.  The syntax of the jobs command is as follows:

sh#(config)job number command number “command”

sh#(config)job number date-time hh:mm:ss

One of the biggest benefits of the job command is that it runs locally, and it will run multiple commands from a single command line entry.  So in our example we would have to run two commands to put a virtual server inline on RSP.  So the command sequence that we would execute would be:

sh#(config) job 1 command 1 “rsp dataflow inpath0_0 add opt-vni vniname_lan_interface_first vni-num end”

sh#(config)job 1 command 2 “rsp dataflow inpath0_0 add opt-vni vniname_wan_interface_last vni-num end”

sh#(config)job 1 enable

Let’s review what we just did.  The first job command inserts the LAN side interface into the virtual network data flow, and the second command inserts the WAN side interface, the third job enables the job for execution. 

To actually run the job we’ll issue:

sh#job 1 execute

One of my other favorite uses for the job command is to create time-based QoS.  In the particular instance that is coming to mind, I had a client that needed to limit replication traffic on a shared link during the day, but after 6pm, they wanted it to run full on.  At 7am they wanted to return bandwidth restrictions.  Using job, I was able to create a QoS rule that activated at 6pm and then returned back to a restricted state at the prescribed time.

So the next time you're up at 3am, get your friend to do the job, so you can get some sleep!

Riverbed Acquires Zeus Technology and Aptimize

Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD), the IT performance company, today announced that it has acquired Aptimize Limited, a privately-owned company that is a market leader in web content optimization. The Aptimize organization, based in Wellington, New Zealand, will become the new Web Content Optimization product group, led by the former CEO of Aptimize, Ed Robinson. Riverbed® also announced today the acquisition of Zeus Technology, a privately-owned company that delivers high-performance software-based load balancing and traffic management solutions for virtual and cloud environments. The acquisitions of the two companies will form the cornerstone of Riverbed’s asymmetric optimization strategy.

It's a natural transition for us for so many reasons to add these technologies to our portfolio. At the end of the day, customers have come to rely on Riverbed to solve their performance problems for any application over any network. They don't necessarily care what tool they use - a WOC, an ADC, or NPM - just so long as their businesses can operate the way they need to.

Zeus and Aptimize make sense because they have created software the way application owners and devops teams want to consume application delivery - and build it right into the application stack. They are designed to be deployed into modern public and private clouds, unlike much of the legacy hardware ADCs that are sold today.

With Zeus and Aptimize, customers will get faster, more reliable, more secure Web applications, regardless of whether they are consumer facing or behind the firewall. We look forward to sharing this new technology with you in the coming days!