What's new in Stingray Traffic Manager 9.5

[mikeiem]

Brocade Stingray Traffic Manager 9.5 is the first and only Application Delivery Controller to offer active-active failover for the highest level of availability and scalability on Amazon AWS. This release also includes a number of interoperability features, hassle-free web content optimization, as well as a key security enhancement with the introduction of a cryptographic module for the Traffic Manager that is in process for validation for Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 1.

Key features of this release include:

• Active-active load balancing for high availability and scalability on Amazon AWS
• Native software install of Stingray Traffic Manager on Amazon EC2
• Support for FIPS 140-2 Level 1
• Aptimizer Express for easy to use web content optimization add on module
• Return path routing supports multiple links and routes for upstream devices
• RESTful API support for validation and comprehensive set of Traffic Manager statistics
• Custom configuration data for storing key value pairs using RESTful API to persist reboots
• Faster SSL with OCSP stapling for reduced latency and reduced load on OCSP responders
• More control on the Stingray Traffic Manager virtual appliance for underlying operating system

 

Stingray Traffic Manager is first ADC to provide active-active load balancing on Amazon AWS

Stingray Traffic Manager 9.5 offers Amazon AWS customers the ultimate in high availability and fault tolerance, active-active failover support for advanced load balancing on AWS. Stingray Traffic Manager is the first ADC to provide this advanced capability on AWS giving customers a 100% increase in ROI because all ADCs can now actively serve traffic without having ADCs sit idle in an active-passive configuration.

Active-active gives enterprises massive scalability and reliability at the traffic-management layer with the ability to cluster multiple active members and support multiple traffic IPs in multiple traffic IP groups, which results in all traffic managers actively processing traffic. Enterprise customers who want to move mission critical applications to AWS can also utilize the high-end Layer-7 capabilities below:

• Automatic application auto scaling for backend servers
• Intelligent global load balancing
• Advanced caching and compression

 

Native software install of Stingray Traffic Manager on Amazon EC2

This release will allow customers to have a native install of Traffic Manager on arbitrary Amazon EC2 Linux instances for flexibility and customization, bypassing the constraints of using an AMI. Previously, Stingray Traffic Manager was available only as virtual appliances.

 

Support for FIPS

Stingray Traffic Manager can now use an embedded FIPS 140-2 level 1 (validation in progress) cryptographic module per FIPS 140-2 implementation guidance section G.5 guidelines. That means Stingray Traffic Manager can now support deployments that require FIPS 140-2 level 1 compliance. In addition, if Stingray is paired with appropriate hardware, higher levels of FIPS compliance are possible. A special license must be purchased and a key deployed in order to activate FIPS mode on Stingray Traffic Manager. (Please refer to the user manual for more details).

 

System Requirements

The Riverbed Stingray FIPS mode is available for the following platforms:

• Stingray Traffic Manager x86_64 virtual appliance on VMware (for Stingray appliance OS version 4.0)
• 32-bit x86 Linux, software installations and all virtual appliances
• 64-bit x86_64 Linux with and without AES-NI

Note: Solaris SPARC platforms do not support this capability.

 

Stingray Traffic Manager Aptimizer Express

Aptimizer Express dynamically optimizes webpages in the background and provides customers with webpages that load significantly faster while reducing data traffic on their network. WCO is the industry term used to describe transforming webpage content on-the-fly into the most compact form, without developers having to manually optimize the behavior and performance of each web page. High-traffic, public-facing websites, corporate websites, e-commerce sites, business productivity tools, and SharePoint applications are transformed for faster delivery, lower-bandwidth requirements, and better user experience.

Aptimizer Express is an add-on module for Stingray Traffic Manager that provides a set of robust optimizations to accelerate the delivery of most web pages, no configuration or tuning is required. This advanced WCO capability with Stingray Aptimizer Express is available as a licensed add-on module for Stingray Traffic Manager 9.5.

Stingray Aptimizer Enterprise is the full featured version of Aptimizer that is available as pure software for web server installs, as an add-on module for Stingray Traffic Manager, or as a pre-packaged software appliance for virtual and cloud environments.

 

Return path routing supports multiple links and routes for upstream devices

Return path routing ensures that traffic is returned via the route from which it arrived. When return path routing is enabled Stingray Traffic Manager uses the MAC addresses of upstream devices to ensure symmetric routing.

 

RESTful API support for validation and comprehensive set of Stingray Traffic Manager statistics

RESTful API support for Stingray Traffic Manager now supports validation of commands, as well as retrieval of Stingray Traffic Manager statistics that were previously available only via SNMP.

RESTful APIs are the established style for integration using the modern collection of devops tools. They are more lightweight, portable, easier to test and faster to develop against compared to a SOAP API approach.

A complete RESTful API is a strong prerequisite for integration with common devops tools and aligns with the Riverbed-wide strategy to build a consistent RESTful management API across all of our products.

 

Custom configuration data for storing persistent key value pairs

This feature allows customers to store and retrieve custom configuration data for use in custom scripts, such as custom monitors or action scripts driven from the Stingray Traffic Manager event system. This information is captured in backups, survives upgrades, and replicated across clusters. It is accessible via RESTful API.

 

Faster SSL with OCSP stapling for reduced latency and improved server performance for SSL/TLS

SSL just got faster! Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) stapling exists to reduce the time it takes to open a SSLv3 or TLS connection and also to reduce the load on the OCSP responder for a website. A benefit of this feature is that OCSP responders will see a big drop in activity and faster SSL/TLS operation when more customers adopt this standard. Why is it faster? When the client fetches the OCSP response directly from the CA, it usually involves the lookup of the domain name of the CA's OCSP server in the DNS as well as establishing a connection to the OCSP server. When OCSP stapling is used, the certificate status information is delivered to the client through the channel already established causing no additional delay. This feature requires a web browser that supports OCSP stapling to function.

This is an emerging technology and Riverbed is excited to provide this capability and lead the way for faster web transactions.

 

Allow users to set Linux tunables (Sysctls)

This feature gives customers greater control of what they can configure with the underlying OS for Stingray Traffic Manager virtual appliances, enabling them to tune the OS and optimize performance for their specific requirements and workloads. The parameters are set through the StingrayTraffic Manager user interface.

Platform Support.

Stingray Traffic Manager 9.5 is available in a variety of virtual appliances today, including VMware vSphere, KVM, XenServer, OracleVM, Amazon EC2, and Microsoft^® Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V^™.

Upgrading
Customers with valid maintenance and support contracts will be able to download this release from their customer account in the Riverbed support site. The new documentation is available at the support site, and release notes are found where the software is downloaded.

Appliances running Stingray Traffic Manager version 9.0 or later can be upgraded to version 9.5 (or later versions) by uploading the upgrade package via the software upgrade section of the administration server's web interface.