Riverbed announced SteelFusion 4.0, a hyper-converged infrastructure solution for the branch of the future.
A key part of the Riverbed Application Performance Platform, SteelFusion 4.0 enables zero IT at the branch by virtualizing and consolidating 100% of data and servers from remote sites into data centers, centralizing data security and IT management without losing the benefits of running branch services locally. SteelFusion meets the IT challenges of today’s sprawling branch environments by enabling organizations to remove all servers, storage, and backup from remote sites; enabling instant provisioning and recovery; providing complete security and visibility; and ensuring that applications simply work.
In SteelFusion 4.0, the hardware platforms have been completely updated and redesigned to deliver increased performance and scalability for remote sites and regional hubs of all sizes. SteelFusion 4.0 also introduces new FusionSync for seamless branch continuity. FusionSync ensures that all branch data is accessible across private and hybrid cloud environments, providing the ability to withstand and recover from data center failures with zero downtime. Now, with SteelFusion 4.0, enterprises can deploy a single hyper-converged solution to centralize all branch office data and applications in the data center as well as leverage the cloud for continuity, resulting in dramatic increases in data security, business continuity and agility, operational efficiency and application performance.
“Branches are the front lines of business with increasing IT needs. However, the answer to delivering customer-centric business is not to introduce more IT complexity and infrastructure, but to rethink branch IT,” said Paul O’Farrell, SVP and GM, SteelFusion and SteelHead Product Groups at Riverbed. “With SteelFusion 4.0, Riverbed delivers the branch of the future with a zero branch IT solution that eliminates the challenges of supporting remote sites. This means getting all of the infrastructure — servers, storage and backup — out of the branch and centralized into the data center. By doing so, companies gain the agility to instantly provision new services and apps and to recover data in minutes versus days. This also means data security and control with full visibility, ensuring business continuity, and that apps perform as if local. SteelFusion 4.0 delivers on all these promises and more.”
The next generation of SteelFusion incorporates the following enhancements:
- A new SteelFusion Edge platform to support larger branch offices. The new SteelFusion Edge platform delivers 4x the memory for virtual machines topping at 256GB to run a greater number of local workloads at larger branch offices and regional hubs. The three models in the new SteelFusion Edge platform also feature Advanced Tiering Cache that complements the existing write cache with solid-state disk read functionality. The new Edge platform replaces all existing SteelFusion Edge models.
- A new SteelFusion Core platform to scale large, global deployments. A new SteelFusion Core platform complements the updated SteelFusion Edge platforms, designed to support a larger number of branch office locations, more capacity and faster performance to enable IT organizations to scale to support larger enterprise deployments.
- Introducing FusionSync capabilities for even better business continuity. This innovative capability synchronizes branch-office data across private and hybrid cloud environments, ensuring all branch data is accessible in case of a data center failure. Organizations can now recover from both branch and datacenter outages within minutes with little to no data loss.
SteelFusion 4.0 is expected to be generally available in May 2015.
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