Riverbed cloud appliances accelerate the migration of data and applications to the cloud, while speeding access to that data from anywhere. Compatibility with industry leading cloud environments eliminates vendor lock-in.

As you migrate services to the cloud, and later broaden your application and data footprint there, our cloud appliances ensure you will meet application performance service level agreements (SLAs), regardless of network latency and enterprise bandwidth limitations. Our cloud products ensure seamless public-cloud integration through features like:

For product model specifications, go to the product family specification sheet.

The Riverbed cloud services system consists of these components:

The Cloud Portal uses elastic scaling technology. As a result, the portal is not always served from a static IP address. Ensure that all appliances that you want to communicate with the Cloud Portal are configured to use DNS and hostnames for the portal.

This section illustrates the client-server deployments that Riverbed cloud services support.

Figure: Servers in the cloud behind a SteelHead Cloud in a NATed environment shows a deployment in which the server-side resources are behind a SteelHead Cloud in a NATed environment.

Figure: Servers in the cloud behind a SteelHead Cloud and Figure: Clients in the cloud behind a SteelHead Cloud show deployments where the network does not have NAT. For example, when you use an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

Each appliance instance requires at least two virtual disks. One disk stores the appliance’s configuration and management resources (this disk is automatically deployed when you create the appliance); the other disk serves as the data store (you must manually add this disk). In AWS, virtual disk drives are referred to as Elastic Block Stores (EBS). We recommend SSD drives.

Appliance images are available on multiple cloud marketplaces. The Cloud Portal supports licensing and simple management for appliances deployed into AWS and Azure platforms, providing they have web access to the portal.

Hybrid networking features such as path selection and secure transport are not supported. Also, SCPS licenses are not supported.

These features are not supported:

Multiple network interface cards (NICs), policy-based routing (PBR), and web cache communication protocol (WCCP) are not supported.

Some appliance models for Azure use multiple disks with Fault Tolerant Storage (FTS) to achieve their large data store capacity. Because of this different disk layout, upgrading to these models requires clearing the data store.

Deployments into AWS do not support:

Deployments into ESXi do not support:

This feature is only supported on appliances deployed into ESXi.

The reduced data store feature checks if the licensed amount of disk space is allocated for the data store. If less than the maximum amount of licensed disk space has been provisioned, the software creates a 30-GB data store. This allows you to create an appliance that requires less disk space but still provides WAN acceleration. The acceleration performance is impacted when you do not allocate maximum disk space for the data store. Performance depends on the size of your working data set.

The appliance uses either the maximum amount of licensed disk space or 30 GB. If you allocate a disk space that is less than the maximum, but more than 30 GB, the appliance uses only 30 GB, disregarding your specified amount. If you allocate less than 30 GB, the appliance does not function correctly.

To increase the data store size from 30 GB to a larger size, you must delete the existing disk and create a new one. Doing this reverts the data store to a “cold” state; performance improves as the appliance executes subsequent data transfers.

SteelHead Cloud licenses come in three FLEX types, based on the maximum throughput each can support:

Licenses for cloud appliances are stored on the Cloud Portal. Each license is associated with a one-time token unique to it. To obtain a one-time token, you must have an account on the Cloud Portal. Typically, Riverbed will establish a user account on the portal for you after you purchase a cloud product, and Riverbed will send you an email with details and login information about your account. After your account is established, you can log in and view your purchased licenses. Select a license to view details about it, including the one-time token associated with it.

To obtain a one-time token, log in to the Cloud Portal. Select the Cloud Appliances tab and select Licenses to display the Licenses page. Select the serial number of an unprovisioned license to display the License Details page. Copy the one-time token displayed on the License Details page.

For virtual appliances that cannot be provisioned through the portal, the token must manually be applied to the appliance.

To upgrade appliances to models that do not require a higher-capacity virtual machine, simply purchase a license for the new model. The appliance detects any change in the license associated with it when it communicates with the licensing portal.

Upgrade to a model that requires a higher-capacity virtual machine by performing this task:

Downgrading a SteelHead Cloud model is as simple as downgrading the license to that of a lower-end model.

Upgrade and downgrade virtual or cloud appliance operating system software in the same manner as physical appliances by using the Software Upgrade page in an appliance’s Management Console.

In some cases, you may be able to upgrade or downgrade the software of appliances deployed into AWS through the Cloud Portal by performing this task: