Steelhead Appliance Installation and Configuration Guide
19
New Features in Version 5.5
Overview of the Steelhead Appliance
Data Protection (backup and disaster recovery)
. The new data protection features in RiOS v5.5.x
further improve the throughput of Steelhead appliances resulting in improved recovery point and
backup times. A combination of multi-core balancing, enhanced adaptive data streamlining modes,
and adaptive compression are all geared towards further improving throughput for data center
workloads and data protection scenarios.
Lotus Notes Application Streamlining
. With the new Lotus Notes Application Streamlining module
in RiOS v5.5.x, Lotus Notes users experience significantly improved performance in sending email
attachments, server to server replication, and client to server replication across the WAN.
Acceleration of Encrypted Microsoft Exchange
. New in RiOS v5.5.x is the ability to run all Microsoft
Exchange Application Streamlining optimizations on encrypted Microsoft Exchange traffic. RiOS
releases prior to RiOS v5.5.x, provide optimization for unencrypted MAPI 2000, 2003, and 2007 traffic.
The new optimization is particularly important for Outlook 2007 environments where encryption is
turned on by default.
Microsoft Office AppLock Optimization
. With the new MS Office AppLock Optimization feature in
RiOS v5.5.x, latency optimization now remains enabled for all users even in times of contention for the
same file. In previous versions of RiOS, when two or more users tried to open the same document,
latency optimizations would cease for the first user. This optimization improves access times
specifically for Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel files.
CIFS Optimization for SMB Signed Traffic
.The new CIFS Optimization for SMB Signed Traffic in
RiOS v5.5 enables Steelhead appliances to deliver the same high levels of CIFS performance even when
the CIFS traffic is signed by the server. In previous releases of RiOS, signed CIFS traffic would receive
Data and Transport Streamlining optimizations but no CIFS Application Streamlining. This new
optimization is valuable in environments where the domain controller is also used as a file server and
where signing is explicitly enabled either on the client or on the server. The RiOS SMB Signing feature
does not support Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows 2008 domains.
TCP Dump Tool
. The TCP Dump Tool allows you to capture one or more traces in parallel directly
from the Management Console without logging into the Steelhead appliance through the CLI.
Common switches are selectable through check boxes and any custom parameters required for a trace
can be entered into a free-form field. Captured trace files are easily accessible through HTML links
directly from the Management Console.
SSL Cert Chains
. Server certificate chains no longer require manual installation of the entire chain
onto the server-side Steelhead appliance. For example, server certificates that are signed by
intermediary certificate authorities that might require validation by higher-level certificate authorities
require only the server certificate itself to be installed onto the server-side Steelhead appliance. The
Steelhead appliance automatically discovers the entire chain and completes validation seamlessly
before commencing optimization.
Top Talkers
. Top Talkers in RiOS v5.5.x delivers granular visibility into WAN bandwidth usage by
reporting the top hosts, applications, and conversations based on the proportion of WAN bandwidth
that is consumed. To understand both optimized and non-optimized traffic patterns, both optimized
WAN traffic and all traffic passed through from LAN to WAN is included in the reporting.
Peer Scalability
. Peer Scalability greatly increases the maximum amount of Steelhead appliances or
Steelhead Mobile Clients that can connect in to any given Steelhead appliance, enabling large
deployments to scale with ease.
