What's New in SteelApp Traffic Manager 9.9

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Brocade SteelApp™ Traffic Manager 9.9 offers increased flexibility simpler implementation for Global Load Balancing, and integration with open-source security workflow tools for faster resolution of application security vulnerabilities.

What's New?

• Enhanced Global Load Balancing, with a built-in DNS capability for simpler implementation
• Improved performance for AWS EC2 instances using high-performance HVM APIs
• Faster resolution of application security vulnerabilities, with ThreadFix workflow integration
• SteelApp 9.9 Long Term Support (LTS) for extended service and lifecycle operation

Enhanced Global Load Balancing, with a built-in DNS Server for simpler implementation

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 SteelApp can use external DNS Servers to resolve IP addresses and determine optimum routing, this new version of SteelApp Traffic Manager includes a built-in DNS server to provide local IP resolution: when SteelApp receives a DNS request, it will resolve that to a list of IP addresses corresponding to different GLB locations. SteelApp monitors the performance and availability of each location to make decisions for global traffic routing.

This new built-in DNS Server is included in SteelApp Enterprise Edition licenses, and is deigned for use only in GLB applications, where a local authoritative DNS Server is needed.

Improved performance for AWS EC2 instances using high-performance HVM APIs

SteelApp 9.9 solutions for AWS are based on HVM AMIs, giving significant performance boost to AWS applications.

Amazon Web Services EC2 AMIs use one of two types of virtualization for application resources - paravirtual (PV) or hardware virtual machine (HVM): the key difference is that HVM guests can take advantage of hardware extensions that provide fast access to the underlying hardware on the host system. AWS now offers EC2 instances with Enhanced Networking. These EC2 instances enable significantly higher packet per second (PPS) performance, lower network jitter and lower latencies. Enhanced Networking is currently supported in AWS C3, R3, and I2 instances.

AWS recommends using current generation instance types and HVM AMIs for the best performance. So with this new release, all SteelApp solutions on the AWS Marketplace are based on HVM AMIs, providing the best performance at lower price points. Users who deploy SteelApp software on Linux AMIs should migrate to HVM AMIs for improved performance.

Faster resolution of application security vulnerabilities, with ThreadFix workflow integration

SteelApp Web App Firewall is already the most scalable application security solution available for virtual and cloud applications, making it easy to use “Wizards” to configure new rules and to create virtual security patches to help adapt to new threats. With so many new and evolving threats, Application Security continues to be a significant challenge for organizations, making it even more important to identify and close security vulnerabilities as fast as possible. However, with the wide range of security tools available, including source-code scanners, penetration testing and third-party alerts, it becomes ever more difficult to assess and prioritize security tasks.

Denim Group’s ThreadFix is an open-source security tool, that is able to import the results of external security scanners, and gives a common workflow to facilitate collaboration between developers, operations and security professionals to assess and prioritize open security vulnerabilities.

With this new release, SteelApp Web App Firewall is now able to connect with ThreadFix, and import a set of recommendations directly into the current ruleset. Security professionals now have the option to either commit the new rules immediately in production, or to monitor the performance of the new rules in “Detection-only” mode, making it very easy to introduce and refine new rules prior to implementing in production.

In addition, SteelApp Web App Firewall is able to synchronize events back to ThreadFix for verification of successful rule implementation, for closed-loop collaboration between security stakeholders across the organization.

SteelApp 9.9 Long Term Support (LTS) for extended service and lifecycle operation

For customers who prefer longer support cycles to support their operational model, Riverbed is declaring SteelApp Traffic Manager 9.9 as an LTS (Long Term Support) release. This means that support for SteelApp 9.9 will be available for three years of software support, followed by one year of limited technical support. The additional one year of limited technical support is intended to provide customers a reasonable amount of time to migrate to a fully supported release.

For more information:

Whitepaper: SteelApp for Global Load Balancing

Brocade Traffic Manager

Solution Brief: SteelApp for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning

Brocade Traffic Manager Information on Brocade.com

See also: Back to Basics - Global Load Balancing With SteelApp

General Information - Platform Support

SteelApp Traffic Manager 9.9 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 9.9 (or later versions) by uploading the upgrade package using the software upgrade section of the administration server's web interface