This chapter provides an overview of SteelFusion Edge (virtual edition), including an overview of the hardware platform and hardware and software dependencies. It includes these sections:

SteelFusion is a converged infrastructure solution, encompassing all branch services such as server, storage, networking, and WAN optimization. SteelFusion is a dual-ended system that comprises two logical components: SteelFusion Edge and SteelFusion Core.

SteelFusion Core is a physical or virtual appliance in the data center that mounts all LUNs that need to be made available to applications and servers at a the branch from the centralized storage array. Core appliances communicate across the WAN with the SteelFusion Edge appliances at the branch.

SteelFusion Edge is a physical or virtual appliance that is located at the branch. The Edge appliance provides a virtualized environment that hosts the branch application servers. The Edge appliance also provides RiOS WAN optimization (depending on your order), and BlockStream-enabled storage.

SteelFusion delivers local user performance to applications and data, while enabling the centralization of these applications and data, instant recovery, and lower total operating costs. You can access applications that run locally in your branch while the data is maintained and protected in your data center. Decoupling computation from its underlying storage allows your applications to run in a stateless mode, which reduces your branch footprint and centralizes management of your branch services.

Figure: Typical SteelFusion deployment shows a typical SteelFusion deployment.

For detailed information about SteelFusion and how it works, see the SteelFusion Edge Management Console User Guide and the SteelFusion Design Guide.

A bare-metal virtualization platform enables you to run multiple virtual machines (VMs) on the Edge appliance. You can consolidate multiple basic services in the branch such as Active Directory (AD), Domain Name Service (DNS), print server, and file server. You install and run VMs directly from the hypervisor node of the Edge appliance.

Virtual Edge uses ESXi 6.0 Update 2 software as the virtualization platform. The hypervisor is included in the Edge appliance and does not require a separate download.

Virtual Edge is a virtual storage appliance that acts as a branch storage tier to the storage in your data center, while also providing the flexibility of virtualization. It acts as a Virtual Storage Provider to the underlying ESXi hypervisor, running on the host hardware by presenting storage through iSCSI.

Virtual Edge enables consolidation and high availability while providing most of the functionality of the physical SteelFusion Edge, with the following exceptions:

A typical Virtual Edge deployment consists of a single ESXi host with a single Virtual Edge VM. In the case of high availability, there will be dual ESXi hosts and dual Virtual Edge VMs. You can make Virtual Edge highly available in an active-passive configuration using iSCSI Multipath I/O (MPIO) for path failover.

All storage-related features available with SteelFusion are available on the Edge appliance. You manage the storage and networking components using the SteelFusion Management Console, and you use VMware vSphere Client or vCenter to interact with the hosted VMs.

Virtual Edge provides BlockStream iSCSI storage for the hypervisor datastores. You can format and use the LUNs provided by BlockStream iSCSI storage through vSphere.

The Edge hardware platform includes:

This section provides an overview of the new features available in Virtual SteelFusion Edge version 5.1.

This section describes the product dependencies for Virtual Edge.

For a RiOS, Storage Edge, SteelFusion Core, and vSphere release matrix, go to the Riverbed Knowledge Base article at https://supportkb.riverbed.com/support/index?page=content&id=S:S27472.

VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and VMware vMotion are not supported on the Virtual Edge VM.

To manage SteelFusion Edge 5.1 appliances, you need to use SCC 9.6.1. Earlier versions of the SCC do not support 5.1 SteelFusion Edges. For details about SCC compatibility across versions, see the SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead Installation Guide.

We recommend that you deploy the Edge appliance behind your firewall. Ports 7800 and 7810 must be open.

The Edge appliance supports a proprietary Riverbed MIB accessible through SNMP. SNMPv1 (RFCs 1155, 1157, 1212, and 1215), SNMPv2c (RFCs 1901, 2578, 2579, 2580, 3416, 3417, and 3418), and SNMPv3 are supported, although some MIB items might be accessible only through SNMPv3 and SNMPv2.

SNMP support allows the Edge to be integrated into network management systems such as Hewlett-Packard OpenView Network Node Manager, BMC Patrol, and other SNMP-based network management tools.

For details on Ethernet network compatibility, see the hardware manufacturer’s documentation. If your appliance has a Riverbed bypass card, see the SteelFusion Edge Hardware and Maintenance Guide for details about the bypass card’s Ethernet network.