You can optionally add sites to the network under. A site is a logical grouping of subnets. Sites represent the physical and logical topology of a site type. You can classify traffic for each site using network addresses. Site types are typically data center, small, medium and large branch office, and so on. Sites provide the SteelHead with the IP addresses of all subnets existing within a site (this applies to non-SteelHead sites as well).

You must define local and remote sites. The site definitions include a list of IP subnets that path selection or QoS will use to identify the site. Every subnet must be globally unique, although they can overlap.

You also need to define the default site that provides a catchall for traffic not assigned to another site.

SteelHeads running RiOS 9.0 and later determine the destination site using a longest-prefix match on the site subnets. For example, if you define site 1 with 10.0.0.0/8 and site 2 with 10.1.0.0/16, then traffic to 10.1.1.1 matches site 2, not site 1. Consequently, the default site defined as 0.0.0.0 only matches traffic that doesn’t match any other site subnets. This is in contrast to RiOS 8.6 and earlier, where you configured sites in an explicit order and the first-matching subnet indicated a match for that site.

You can associate an inbound or outbound QoS profile with a site to fine-tune the QoS behavior for each site. For details, see Viewing and editing the default QoS classes and Adding QoS profiles.

The default site is a catch-all for traffic not assigned to another site that has a subnet of 0.0.0.0/0. You don’t need to add a remote site if you only have one remote site and the default site is suitable.

Under Sites, click + Add a Site. The Create a New Site dialog box appears.

Specify the site name: for example, DCEurope. Optionally, specify a subnet IP prefix for a set of IP addresses on the LAN-side, separating multiple subnets with commas.

Optionally, specify the SteelHead IP addresses of the peers. The site uses peers for path selection monitoring and GRE tunneling. Separate multiple peers with commas. SteelHead peers are select distinct IP addresses you choose to poll, in order, to monitor path availability or they’re the remote site at the end of a GRE tunnel. We strongly recommend that you use the remote SteelHead in-path IP address as a peer address when possible.

When you add a site in the SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead, you don’t have to specify the IP addresses of the SteelHeads at each given site, because the SCC dynamically adds them to the site configuration that it sends to the SteelHeads.

You can use the CLI to connect a peer to multiple areas through different interfaces. For details, see the Riverbed Command-Line Interface Reference Manual.

Optionally, select an inbound or outbound QoS profile to use with the site. For details, see Adding QoS profiles.

You don’t need to select a QoS profile for path selection.