Welcome
Welcome to the SteelFusion Design Guide. Read this preface for an overview of the information provided in this guide and the documentation conventions used throughout, hardware and software dependencies, additional reading, and contact information. This preface includes the following sections:
About this guide
The SteelFusion Design Guide provides an overview and best practices of the SteelFusion Core and Edge appliances. It discusses how to configure them as a system.
This guide includes information relevant to the following products and product features:
• Riverbed SteelFusion Core (Core)
• Riverbed SteelFusion Core Virtual Edition (Core-v)
• Riverbed SteelFusion Edge (Edge)
• Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS)
• Riverbed SteelHead (SteelHead)
• Riverbed SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead (SCC or Controller)
• Riverbed Virtual Services Platform (VSP)
This guide is intended to be used together with the documentation and technical notes available at
https://support.riverbed.com.Note: All SteelHead EX information has been removed. For information on deploying SteelHead EX with SteelFusion, see the SteelFusion Deployment Guide, April 2015 or earlier.
Audience
This guide is written for storage, virtualization, and network administrators familiar with administering and managing storage arrays, snapshots, backups, and virtual machines (VMs), Fibre Channel, and iSCSI.
This guide requires you to be familiar with:
• virtualization technology
• the SteelFusion Core Management Console User’s Guide
• the SteelFusion Edge Management Console User’s Guide
• the SteelFusion Edge Hardware and Maintenance Guide
• the Riverbed Command-Line Interface Reference Manual
• the SteelFusion Command-Line Interface Reference Manual
• the SteelFusion Edge Installation and Configuration Guide
Document 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. |
Courier | Code examples appear in Courier font: amnesiac > enable
amnesiac # configure terminal |
< > | Values that you specify appear in angle brackets: interface <ip-address> |
[ ] | Optional keywords or variables appear in 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>} |
Documentation and release notes
The most current version of all Riverbed documentation can be found on the Riverbed Support site at
https://support.riverbed.com.
See the Riverbed 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 Riverbed Knowledge Base, log in to the Riverbed 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 Riverbed Support site at
http://www.riverbed.com/services/index.html. Examine the release notes before you begin the installation and configuration process.
Contacting Riverbed
This section describes how to contact departments within Riverbed.
• Technical support - Problems installing, using, or replacing Riverbed products? Contact Riverbed Support or your channel partner who provides support. To contact Riverbed Support, open a trouble ticket by calling 1-888-RVBD-TAC (1-888-782-3822) in the United States and Canada or +1 415-247-7381 outside the United States. You can also go to
https://support.riverbed.com.
• Documentation - Have suggestions about Riverbed’s online documentation or printed materials? Send comments to
techpubs@riverbed.com.
What is new
Since the SteelFusion Deployment Guide, April 2015, this guide has been retitled to the SteelFusion Design Guide, and the following information has been added or updated:
• Dashboard -
Core dashboard overview.
The new Core dashboard gives you an instant and dynamic view into key statistics for your enterprise, such as alarms, cache efficiency, and LUN and Edge performance. For details, see the
SteelFusion Core Management Console User’s Guide.
• Cloud Gateway Support -
Cloud storage gateway support.
Consolidate your branch data to the cloud using Amazon Storage Gateway (AWS S3 backend) or Microsoft StorSimple (Azure backend) as virtual appliances in the data center. This consolidation will extend the benefits of the hybrid cloud to your branch infrastructure, giving you the flexibility of augmenting your data center storage with cloud storage. For details, see the
SteelFusion with StorSimple Hybrid Cloud Storage Solution Guide and
SteelFusion with Amazon Web Services Storage Gateway Solution Guide.
• Expanded storage array support - You can now configure native snapshots for the HP 3PAR and IBM XIV storage arrays. HP 3PAR support includes the 7000 and 8000 series, and IBM XIV support includes IBM XIV and Spectrum Accelerate platforms. For details, see the SteelFusion Core Management Console User’s Guide.