About branch warming for SteelHead Mobile performance
You enable branch warming for SteelHead Mobiles under Optimization > Data Replication: Data Store. By default, branch warming is enabled.
Branch warming keeps track of data segments created while a SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead Mobile user is in an Edge-enabled branch office and sends the new data back to the SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead Mobile user’s laptop. When the user leaves the branch office, the SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead Mobile client provides warm performance.
Branch warming cooperates with and optimizes transfers for a server-side appliance. New data transfers between the client and server are populated in the SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead Mobile RiOS data store, the branch appliance RiOS data store, and the server-side appliance RiOS data store.
When the server downloads data, the server-side appliance checks if either the SteelHead Mobile or the branch appliance has the data in their RiOS data store. If either device already has the data segments, the server-side appliance sends only references to the data. The SteelHead Mobile and the branch appliance communicate with each other to resolve the references.
Other clients at a branch office benefit from branch warming as well, because data transferred by one client at a branch also populates the branch appliance RiOS data store. Performance improves with all clients at the branch because they receive warm performance for that data.
These requirements must be met for branch warming to work:
• Enable latency-based location awareness and branch warming on the SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead Mobile.
• Enable branch warming on both the client-side and server-side appliances.
• Both the client-side and server-side appliances must be deployed in-path.
• Enable enhanced autodiscovery on both the client-side and server-side appliances.
• The Mobile Controller appliance must be running RiOS 3.0 or later.
• The SteelHeads must be running RiOS 9.0 or later.
• The SteelHead Mobile must be running RiOS 3.0 or later.
Branch warming does not improve performance for configurations using:
• SSL connections
• Out-of-path with fixed-target rules
• SteelHead Mobiles that communicate with multiple server-side appliances in different scenarios. For example, if a SteelHead Mobile home user peers with one server-side appliance after logging in through a VPN network and peers with a different server-side appliance after logging in from the branch office, branch warming does not improve performance.