SteelHead

The leading network optimisation and application performance solution chosen by over 30,000 organisations worldwide

The performance of networks and applications directly impacts business productivity. Riverbed draws from nearly two decades of experience in driving network and application performance over Wide Area Networks with its flagship offering, SteelHead. SteelHead delivers the underlying technology that helps enterprises of all sizes maximise the efficiency and performance of the networks and applications used to run modern business.

In today’s hybrid world of cloud workloads, SaaS applications, Internet Broadband and MPLS, the SteelHead family of products and solutions is built upon 4 core principles required for any organisation interested in making sure networks and apps perform reliably and securely while enhancing the user experience.

SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead enables you to easily leverage and control hybrid WANs for accelerated delivery, based on your business requirements, of critical applications over faster, more secure networks and less-critical recreational applications over the public Internet. The solution simplifies application performance and path management and ensures secure service-level delivery for business critical applications.

SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead also provides performance monitoring with reporting metrics such as traffic levels, application throughput performance and TCP session flow characteristics – to help diagnose and fix problems.

SteelHead Interceptor appliances in an easy-to-use, browser-based management console

SteelCentral Controller uses a wizard-like process for defining application policies based on customer business requirements. It helps you prioritise, secure and deliver applications over any network (MPLS and Internet) based on intent-based, global business policies.

It provides easy configuration, monitoring, upgrading, troubleshooting and reporting on your SteelHead solutions including groups of SteelHead CX appliances and virtual or cloud instances.

Easy Configuration

• Centralises configuration for a SteelHead deployment from a single dashboard
• Enables configuration of security setup to enable hybrid path selection of secured networks
• Sends configuration to SteelHeads automatically once they come online

Centralised monitoring and reporting

• Monitors SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead Mobile and SteelHead Interceptor including health checks, auto-registrations and automatic backups
• Supports SNMP MIBs to monitor SteelHeads through third-party applications
• Provides reporting capabilities on the SteelHead solution’s health and other statistics in an easy-to-use format

Uninterrupted service

• Supports additions or removal of SteelHeads without affecting operations
• Facilitates backup and restore of all configuration files from distributed SteelHeads
• Allows scheduling of updates and policy configurations so they can take place after-hours or at any specified time

When you want more throughput or connections than just one SteelHead can provide – or if you want a high-availability deployment option – SteelHead Interceptor helps manage and scale your network-wide throughput.

With SteelHead Interceptor, you can intelligently integrate all your SteelHead solutions while directing activity and network load with superior management and administration capabilities.

Whether you want more throughput or connections than just one SteelHead can provide – or if you desire a higher availability option – SteelHead Interceptor helps manage and scale SteelHead solutions.

What is a Load Balancer?

SteelHead Interceptor enables customers to scale optimisation solutions to support hundreds of thousands of end-users across an enterprise, as well as very high bandwidth connections into the data center. SteelHead Interceptor clusters groups of SteelHeads to work together seamlessly and provides:

• Real-time dynamic load balancing of your SteelHeads
• Enhanced optimisation for even greater throughput and bandwidth reduction
• The ability to add, modify, or remove SteelHeads in real-time, with no disruption to operations
• Clustering of up to 20 SteelHeads to manage up to one million concurrent connections