(minor edit to this this older post, to correct some links)
Brocade® SteelApp™ Traffic Manager 9.8 offers increased security through TLS 1.2, DNS over TCP based Global Server Load Balancing, powerful new TrafficScript functions and enhanced networking capabilities for AWS VPC deployments
What's New?
- Stronger transaction security, with support for TLS 1.2
- Support for more GLB deployment scenarios with DNS over TCP
- Wider range of deployment scenarios in AWS VPC deployments with support for multiple ENIs
- TrafficScript enhancements
Stronger transaction security, with support for TLS 1.2
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols are the cornerstones of Internet security, providing a standard for authenticated transactions using secure key exchange and encryption. With support for TLS 1.2, SteelApp provides a wider range of protocol support, including the use of stronger SHA hash functions for authentication, allowing the clients to specify which hash and signature algorithms they will accept. SteelApp 9.8 now permits full control over the selection of security settings per virtual server, per pool, or as a global setting, to suit a range of enterprise deployment options.
Support for more GLB deployment scenarios with DNS over TCP
SteelApp Traffic Manager is already used by many customers to facilitate Global Load Balancing (GLB), implementing a range of business rules and policies for distributing transactions across geographic data centers. While GLB depends on DNS for reliable operation, DNS over UDP limits the DNS responses to 512 bytes. EDNS, which allows for 4096 byte DNS responses over UDP, is not always option due to fragmentation and firewall issues. SteelApp 9.8 includes support for DNS over TCP to allow for larger DNS response packets seen in large-scale distributed cloud applications or in DNS implementations that use DNSSEC.
Wider range of deployment scenarios in AWS VPC deployments with support for multiple ENIs
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) allows enterprises to create a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where they can create their own virtual network. Users have complete control of their virtual networking environment including the IP address range, subnets, route tables and network gateways. AWS VPC also allows enterprises to extend their datacenter into the cloud. VPC provides a secure and fast IPsec Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection back to your enterprise datacenter. SteelApp now supports multiple network interfaces (ENIs) in AWS VPC to allow for a wider range of deployment scenarios and application architectures in AWS VPC deployments. For example, this allows a SteelApp instance to be attached to public and private subnets in a VPC.
TrafficScript enhancements
Also new with version 9.8 are some powerful new features in SteelApp TrafficScript, to make it even easier to select different policies in real time, and to make decisions based on the results of other transactions. SteelApp 9.8 allows users to upload TrafficScript Rules into the Rules catalog making it a breeze to create rules offline and upload them. A new switch() statement makes it easier to construct more maintainable code, while a new connection function getCompletionReasonCode() function helps to select out specific transactions for diagnostics.
For more information on the new switch() statement:
New switch() statement for SteelApp TrafficScript
For more information on the new getCompletionReasonCode() and getCompletionReasonInfo() functions:
Finding a needle in your haystack, using the connection.getCompletionReasonCode() and connection.get...
General Information
Platform Support
SteelApp Traffic Manager 9.8 is available in a range of virtual appliances and platforms, including Linux, VMware, KVM, XenServer, Amazon EC2, Microsoft® Azure cloud services, Microsoft® Windows Server 2012 with Microsoft Hyper-V™ and Oracle VM.
Upgrading
Customers with valid maintenance and support contracts can download this release from their customer account in the Riverbed support site. The new documentation is available on the support site. Release notes are included with the software.
Appliances running SteelApp Traffic Manager version 9.0 or later can be upgraded to version 9.8 (or later versions) by uploading the upgrade package using the software upgrade section of the administration server's web interface.
