RiOS 5.5 introduces enhancements to the Riverbed Services
Platform (RSP), optimizes Lotus Notes and encrypted MAPI, and adds
business continuity features and SMB Signing support. All of these
improvements increase Riverbed's technology leadership position in
Wide Area Data Services (WDS).
Speed
Lotus Notes Optimization improves the sending
of large email attachments with a performance gain of 8X to 25X.
This release also optimizes server-to- server replication,
calendaring, and more. RiOS 5.5 transparently switches off
transport compression so Notes/Domino traffic for all applications
can be more effectively optimized by the Steelhead appliance.
Encrypted MAPI support allows Steelhead®
appliances to operate in secure customer environments where email
encryption is used (often by default) between the client and host
servers without impacting security. Performance is now improved as
much as for unencrypted email, up to 54X.
Business Continuity Improvements enable
Steelhead appliances to scale for high-throughput disaster recovery
environments, with up to Gigabit LAN-side throughput and at least
5x data reduction. These enhancements enable acceleration of
asynchronous replication solutions such as EMC SRDF/A, CA XOsoft,
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, and more.
Signing Support allows customers who serve
files from domain controllers where Microsoft's SMB signing is set
to required by default to protect themselves from "man in the
middle" attacks. This feature gives support for CIFS latency
optimizations in the presence of signed packets.
Scalability
Central Management Console (CMC) enhancements
give IT staff the ability to backup and restore CMC configurations,
view improved reporting, make policy comparisons to improve
consistency, and set up new Steelhead appliance configurations
services such as RSP package management.
Top Talkers Reporting allows network
administrators to report on the top users of bandwidth, either for
security monitoring or accounting purposes. The flows that are
generating the heaviest use of WAN bandwidth are known as the Top
Talkers. This feature gives them back more LAN and WAN visibility
without having to use the WAN transparency feature or NetFlow.
Microsoft Office OpLock Optimization means
latency optimizations now remain enabled for all users even in
times of contention for the same file. This optimization improves
access times specifically for Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel
files.
Simplicity
RSP Improvements offer customers support for
local packages like streaming media, security, and Active
Directory, as well as the capacity to run Windows inside of the RSP
on their Steelhead appliances. Customers can run up to five
instances with RSP now that VMware is the new RSP virtualization
platform.
