SD-WAN lets enterprises simplify their network configuration and management. With SD-WAN, enterprises can intuitively manage networks based on parameters relevant to their businesses such as applications, users, locations, performance, and security.

The Riverbed SD-WAN solution provides an intelligent and intuitive approach to designing, deploying, and managing distributed networks for the modern hybrid enterprise. The solution consists of appliances and a centralized management console that the administrator uses to view network health, deploy appliances, and make changes to policies. SteelConnect high-level architecture shows the high-level architecture.

SteelConnect components comprise the following:

SteelConnect Manager (SCM) is a web-based, management portal that lets you design the network before deploying any hardware. You can use SCM to push configurations to the devices for deployment of infrastructure without the need for an engineer to be on site. After deployment, SCM provides network visibility for manageability and troubleshooting.

The SCM server currently resides in the global Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud public infrastructure and orchestrates a series of services hosted by Riverbed. Each service has dependencies that function as a part of the collective SteelConnect infrastructure. These services include:

SteelConnect appliances (gateways, switches, and access points) connect to core services, and the services associated with them, to find their assigned server. After an appliance is paired with SCM, it connects only to its corresponding SCM. Each SCM communicates through various services for updates regarding the appliance registration and management changes. All communication between the appliances and SCM, as well as all interoperating services inside of SCM, are authenticated through x509 certificate validation. These Riverbed-owned certificates are exchanged and validated for authenticity.

SCM manages all appliances, including all firmware upgrades.

SteelConnect gateways are physical and virtual secure WAN gateways that provide unified connectivity (point-to-point and full-mesh) and enforcement of global policy across on-premises and cloud network environments, zero-touch provisioning, and secure automated VPN management.

Gateways are categorized into hardware and software appliances. The gateways automatically map into connected network segments, called zones, to:

The SteelConnect gateway comes in various form factors to accommodate a variety of network architectures: