Riverbed Cascade extends network visibility deeper into data centre

Today, Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD), the IT performance company, introduced new capabilities to its Cascade application-aware network performance management (NPM) solution, which delivers the needed visibility into virtualised data centres and data centres that use load balancing application delivery controllers (ADCs).

This new release, Cascade 9.5, extends end-to-end service performance monitoring and troubleshooting - from the remote LAN, across the wide area network (WAN), and now deeper into the data centre.

Cascade Profiler is the first NPM solution to provide a wizard-based, streamlined configuration process for service monitoring across ADCs. Virtual Cascade Shark is the first product to offer continuous packet capture and performance analysis in virtual environments. With this new release, the Cascade product line has unmatched capabilities for complex, global networks that include load-balanced and virtualised data centres.

Enterprise customers deploy ADCs to optimise application delivery, flexibility and resiliency. The challenges presented by load balancing ADCs create significant visibility problems for network operations - by masking the necessary metrics and application dependencies - limiting their ability to monitor for end-to-end performance or troubleshoot degradations. Cascade 9.5 automates the discovery and monitoring of load balanced applications. By integrating with ADCs - F5 Local Traffic Manager, Riverbed Stingray Traffic Manager, and others - Cascade bridges the visibility gap between the client-side and server-side connections of load balancers, providing IT operations with a view of application performance.

“The irresistible tide of server virtualisation has combined with increasingly strategic deployments of application and network optimisation technologies to create new and troublesome visibility barriers for IT operations,” said Jim Frey, managing research director at EMA. “This requires a fundamental re-assessment of performance monitoring and management technologies due to fast emerging requirements for integrated visibility and virtualised instrumentation. The Riverbed Cascade solution is evolving in this very direction, and coupled with the balance of the Riverbed optimisation portfolio, comprises a unique and compelling combination of visibility and control for the evolving, virtualised enterprise IT infrastructure.”

In addition to deploying ADCs to optimise application delivery, enterprise customers are also virtualising their data centres and consolidating IT resources to achieve flexibility and cost savings. However, as with ADCs, virtualisation creates visibility challenges for IT operations teams, because once an application enters a virtualised environment, they lose visibility into application performance. The new Virtual Cascade Shark software provides the real-time visibility needed to manage and troubleshoot application performance as it traverses the virtual switch in VMware ESX environments. Virtual Cascade Shark monitors all inter-virtual machine traffic, exporting application-enhanced traffic metrics to the Cascade Profiler performance management dashboard, for centralised service-level discovery and monitoring and accelerated troubleshooting. It also continuously captures packets and stores them on the local server or in a storage area network (SAN) for back-in-time analysis with Cascade Pilot network analysis software.

“Without Riverbed Cascade, it would be a trying experience to keep the network running on a day-to-day basis,” said Marc Seybold, CIO at SUNY College at Old Westbury. “If we were to turn off Cascade, then an accumulation of small problems would eventually grow into a rogue wave of problems, and we would not have the tools to know what is happening inside the network. Based on our experience with Cascade, we are very excited to gain the same level of performance management and visibility, into our virtualised environment, with the Virtual Cascade Shark.”

“Virtualisation and load balancing have fundamentally transformed the data centre. While these technologies provide amazing benefits, they also create real visibility challenges,” said Dimitri Vlachos, senior director of marketing and product management, Cascade Business Unit at Riverbed. “For end-to-end performance, IT operations need visibility into all application and network traffic across all IT environments - physical and virtual, from the user to the deepest depths of the data centre. Cascade provides enterprise customers a unique, cost-effective, and easy-to-use solution for monitoring and troubleshooting today's complex IT environment and the critical applications that run over it.”

This release of Cascade also includes a number of new and important features, including:

Multi-segment analysis - Cascade Pilot simplifies the task of correlating and analysing related traffic streams captured from multiple locations or sources to quickly identify where on the network performance issues are occurring - whether it is on the remote LAN, the WAN or within the data centre.

Precision time stamping support - Cascade Shark can now adopt nanosecond time stamps from SPAN port aggregators for greater precision and accuracy. Adopting time stamps from existing network equipment is more cost-efficient and enables co-ordinated time stamping across the network for performance troubleshooting. It can also be used with the new multi-segment analysis capabilities within Cascade Pilot for monitoring low-latency trading environments and other time-sensitive applications for business-critical operations. Supported network taps include Gigamon GigaVUE, cPacket Networks CVU and cTap, and VSS Monitoring Distributed Traffic Capture.

VOIP quality reporting - Cascade 9.5 tightens the integration between Cascade Shark and Cascade Profiler by bringing support for voice over IP (VOIP) protocols and quality metrics into Cascade Profiler. This information enables IT managers to determine how VOIP services are performing in conjunction with data resources in order to make effective capacity planning and optimisation decisions, and improve end-user experience. Supported VOIP quality metrics include mean opinion score (MOS), R-Factor, packet loss and jitter. In addition, Cascade supports the Cisco Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP).

Availability: The enhanced Cascade solution is expected to be generally available in Q1 2012.

For additional information on Cascade, visit http://www.riverbed.com/cascade. In addition, download a complimentary copy of “Network Monitoring and Troubleshooting for DUMMIES” Riverbed Cascade Special Edition at http://rvbd.ly/NMaTfD.

More than 16,000 organizations worldwide depend on Riverbed to understand, optimize and consolidate their IT infrastructure, through solutions that overcome performance issues caused by distance, distributed computing, and ever increasing amounts of data.

As IT organizations embark on strategic initiatives to virtualize, consolidate and migrate workloads into cloud environments, users are moved farther from their data, and slow applications, file transfers and inefficient websites negatively impact the performance of these initiatives. Riverbed transforms IT performance by providing solutions spanning WAN optimization, application-aware NPM, application delivery, web content optimization (WCO), and cloud data protection for backup, archive and disaster recovery. By providing the broadest portfolio of performance solutions that deliver anywhere, any application optimization, Riverbed enables organizations to increase productivity and efficiency, while enhancing business resilience and controlling costs.

Forward-looking statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the expected demand for Riverbed's products and services, statements regarding performance results of Cascade solutions that may suggest likely or certain outcomes, and statements relating to Riverbed's ability to meet the needs of distributed organisations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that if they do not fully materialise or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include our ability to react to trends and challenges in our business and the markets in which we operate; our ability to anticipate market needs or develop new or enhanced products to meet those needs; the adoption rate of our products; our ability to establish and maintain successful relationships with our distribution partners; our ability to compete in our industry; fluctuations in demand, sales cycles and prices for our products and services; shortages or price fluctuations in our supply chain; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; general political, economic and market conditions and events; and other risks and uncertainties described more fully in our documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. More information about these and other risks that may impact Riverbed's business are set forth in our Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on October 28, 2011. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Any future product, feature or related specification that may be referenced in this release are for information purposes only and are not commitments to deliver any technology or enhancement. Riverbed reserves the right to modify future product plans at any time.