Welcome
Welcome to the Riverbed Virtual & Cloud Platforms Guide. This guide covers information specific to the virtual form factor of Riverbed’s acceleration products. For all other product information, consult that product’s user guide, deployment guides, the Riverbed Command-Line Interface Reference Manual, or, for all hardware-specific information, the Riverbed Hardware Platforms Guide.
The Riverbed Virtual & Cloud Platforms Guide replaces:
• Cloud Accelerator User Guide
• SteelHead (Virtual Edition) Installation Guide
• SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead (Virtual Edition) Installation Guide
• Client Accelerator Controller Installation Guide
The Riverbed Hardware Platforms Guide replaces these manuals:
• Network and Storage Card Installation Guide
• Rack Installation Guide
• SteelHead Installation and Configuration Guide
• Upgrade and Maintenance Guide
This guide is written for network administrators who are familiar with administering and managing WANs using common network protocols such as TCP, CIFS, HTTP, FTP, and NFS, and who are familiar with cloud marketplaces and common virtualization platforms.
Riverbed offers additional products in the cloud and as virtual machine software. For information about the Riverbed-managed SaaS Accelerator solution, see the SaaS Accelerator Manager User Guide. For information about Riverbed’s Client Accelerator solution, see the Client Accelerator User Guide.
About product terminology
Here’s a description of product names and related terms with their abbreviations. You’ll need to know these as you read this guide.
Term | Abbreviation | Meaning |
|---|
SteelHead SteelHead (Virtual Edition) Cloud Accelerator | — SteelHead-v — | The physical or virtual appliance that, together with other appliances, provides acceleration and other services. Also referred to as the appliance. |
Cloud Portal | portal | The Riverbed-hosted multi-tenant management service for AWS and Azure Cloud Accelerator. Primarily used for license management. |
SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead | SCC | The management component used to create and push policies to managed appliances. It also provides reporting capabilities. Also referred to as the controller. |
SaaS Accelerator Manager | SAM | The multi-tenant management component of the Riverbed-hosted SaaS acceleration service. |
Client Accelerator solution | — | The multi-product solution for accelerating applications end-to-end, from data center or cloud to user endpoint devices. |
Client Accelerator Controller | controller | The management component used to create and push policies to managed appliances. It also provides reporting capabilities. Also referred to as the controller. |
Management Console | — | The graphical user interface (GUI) used to manage appliances. |
Riverbed Optimization System | RiOS | The acceleration service. |
hypervisor | — | The software that provides virtualization services and on which virtual machines run. |
virtual machine | VM | A software computer system running as a guest on the host hypervisor. Riverbed virtual products run on the virtual machine. |
datastore
data store | —
— | The virtual machine’s data disk, backed by physical storage media. The appliance’s data storage. |
In this document, where it is necessary to distinguish the virtual from the physical form factor, “(Virtual Edition)” or “-v” is appended to the product name. Where this distinction is unnecessary, the standard product name is used.
About document conventions
This guide uses this standard set of typographical conventions:
Convention | Meaning |
|---|
italics | Within text, new terms and emphasized words appear in italic typeface. |
boldface | Within text, CLI commands, CLI parameters, and REST API properties appear in bold typeface. |
Monospace | Code examples appear in monospace font: amnesiac > enable amnesiac # configure terminal |
< > | Values that you specify appear in angle brackets: interface <ip-address> |
[ ] | Optional keywords or variables appear in square brackets: ntp peer <ip-address> [version <number>] |
{ } | Elements that are part of a required choice appear in braces: {<interface-name> | ascii <string> | hex <string>} |
| | The pipe symbol separates alternative, mutually exclusive elements of a choice. The pipe symbol is used in conjunction with braces or brackets; the braces or brackets group the choices and identify them as required or optional: {delete <filename> | upload <filename>} |
About documentation and release notes
You can find the most current version of all Riverbed documentation on the Support site at
https://support.riverbed.com.
See the Knowledge Base for any known issues, how-to documents, system requirements, and common error messages. You can browse titles or search for keywords and strings. To access the Knowledge Base, log in to the Support site at
https://support.riverbed.com.
Each software release includes release notes. The release notes list new features, known issues, and fixed problems. To obtain the most current version of the release notes, go to the Software and Documentation section of the Support site at
https://support.riverbed.com. Examine the release notes before you begin the installation and configuration process.
Contacting Riverbed
This section describes how to contact departments within Riverbed. For some products, you might need to provide your Support ID. You can find this on the Help page of your product’s Management Console.
• Documentation—Have suggestions about Riverbed’s online documentation or printed materials? Send comments to
techpubs@riverbed.com.