Web application firewalls (WAF), like Riverbed SteelApp Web Firewall, have a specific purpose: to protect services from attacks that attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in web applications. While general purpose firewalls (both traditional and next-generation) may also provide a degree of such protection, they’re typically intended for protecting enterprise networks. WAFs include additional protection capabilities that traditional enterprise firewalls lack, and concentrate these capabilities at the application layer.   By Steve Riley ... View more

Riverbed SteelApp™ Traffic Manager from Riverbed Technology is a high performance software-based application delivery controller (ADC), designed to deliver faster and more reliable access to Microsoft Azure applications as well as private applications. As a software-based ADC, it provides unprecedented scale and flexibility to deliver advanced application services. ... View more

I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that we now support CentOS for SSC. It is targeted at organizations that require SSC or the micro instance host deployments on a standardized RedHat-based operating system. CentOS 6.5 is required with the software available as a RPM package which includes all of the current functionality that is available under the shipping SSC or the micro instance hosts products for Ubuntu 12.04.   More information: SteelApp for Application Delivery Control & Scalability Whitepaper: Global Load Balancing with SteelApp Traffic Manager Solution Brief: SteelApp Traffic Manager for Disaster Recovery Deployment Guide - Global Load Balancing with Parallel DNS Video: Global Load Balancing in Amazon AWS cloud with Stingray Download SteelApp Developer Edition for Free   ... View more

Version 1.3 delivers new licensing options and migration tools for ADC-as-a-Service Deployment Brocade SteelCentral™ Services Controller (SSC) for SteelApp TM release 1.3 delivers new capabilities and licensing options that increase the flexibility and ease with which customers can deploy an application delivery infrastructure.   The new licensing options allow customers to easily incorporate advanced features into new or existing SSC deployments. In addition, tools have been introduced that improve the ease that customer can initially deploy SSC virtual appliances, migrate an existing SSC or SteelApp Traffic Manager (STM) micro-instance host to new versions and reduce the downtime associated with version upgrades. Features include: Add-on licensing Micro-instance host virtual appliance image upgrade capability Micro-instance host virtual appliance migration tool SSC graphical setup wizard Community Enterprise Operating System (CentOS) support for SSC and STM micro-instance host   The following offers additional details regarding each of the new capabilities.   Add-On licensing offers flexible license options SteelApp Traffic Manager supports a series of core licenses that have varying combinations of common features. Starting with this release we are shipping add-on licenses that enable a single feature that augments an existing core license. Two add-on licenses are available. The first is for Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) support and the second delivers web application firewall (WAF) capabilities. These licenses work with both the existing cloud service provider and enterprise licensing models and have the following characteristics: Provide fixed bandwidth license, e.g. 5GB of WAF functionality Can be 'stacked' in a manner similar to existing bandwidth packs Are additive across all SSCs in a cluster For enterprise accounts, the add-on licenses are tied to base licenses and have start and end validity dates For cloud service providers (CSPs) the add-on licenses are tracked in metering logs and are charged for leveraging CSP usage-based pricing model   Simplify instance host upgrades with the image upgrade tool This capability minimizes the downtime and complexity associated with a software upgrade of an SSC micro-instance host. It allows a virtual appliance-based micro-instance host deployment to download a new image and then flash the backup image partition while the micro-instance host continues to operate using the earlier version located on the primary image partition. Customers can then decide to boot into the backup image partition with the new image during a planned downtime or maintenance cycle.   Reduce downtime with the host migration tool This command line-based tool assists customers move their SteelApp Traffic Manager deployments from an existing micro-instance host virtual appliance to a new micro-instance host that is operating with an updated release.  This allows customers to benefit from features on new software versions with a rapid and easy process that reduces software upgrade downtime.   Ease deployment with the SSC setup wizard The SSC graphical setup wizard delivers an intuitive step-by-step guide for customers to configure SSC from a simple, streamlined wizard instead of a command line interface (CLI) or graphical user interface (GUI) with multiple tabs, pages, and parameters. The first time a user logs in to a newly deployed SSC, it will initiate the setup wizard that walks a customer through the deployment of a fully functional SSC environment. After the initial deployment, customers can manually activate the setup wizard from the MANAGE menu link.   Increase deployment flexibility with CentOS support CentOS support is targeted at organizations that require SSC or the micro instance host deployments on a standardized RedHat-based operating system. CentOS 6.5 is required with the software available as a RPM package which includes all of the current functionality that is available under the shipping SSC or the micro instance hosts products for Ubuntu 12.04.   General information Platform support SteelCentral Services Controller for SteelApp version 1.3 is available as a standalone deployment on Ubuntu Linux or as a virtual appliance on VMware ® vSphere.   Upgrading Customers with valid maintenance and support contracts will be able to download this release from their customer account on the Riverbed Support portal. The new documentation is also available on the Support portal, and release notes are located on the software download site. ... View more

NEW VERSION 9.6 Accelerates Microsoft® SharePoint™ 2013 and Enhances AWS Scalability   Brocade® Stingray™ Traffic Manager 9.6 delivers new capabilities that allow enterprises and service providers faster page loads for Microsoft™ SharePoint™ 2013, increased reliability and scalability on Amazon Web Services, more flexible security, and simpler interface for networking features.   FEATURES Improving SharePoint 2013 performance Automatic scaling across availability zones in Amazon Web Services Selection of SSL/TLS protocol versions and cipher suites by virtual server or pool NAT Enhancements   Automatic scaling across availability zones in Amazon Web Services Traffic Manager 9.6 allows customers who are deploying in multiple AWS availability zones (AZ) to auto-scale their applications in the multiple AZs. Key features include: Active-active load balancing for high-availability and scalability on Amazon AWS When auto-scaling is enabled, Traffic Manager can scale up and scale down the pool nodes   Improving SharePoint 2013 performance Riverbed Stingray Aptimizer for SharePoint speeds up a SharePoint 2013 website or intranet by automatically applying advanced web content option techniques without making any website or browser changes. This feature can be either an add-on to Stingray Traffic Manager or in a standalone proxy mode that works with any ADC. Aptimizer for SharePoint 2013: Reduces page-load times for first view and repeat views Significantly reduces data traffic Reduces networking and content delivery costs Increases server throughput by off-loading the server Software-only solution Aptimizer provides optimization settings tuned for acceleration Microsoft SharePoint 2013 internet and intranet sites.Optimizations include: Resource URL versioning MDS fragment optimization Durable caching CSS StyleSheet inlining Background image inlining Progressive download of JPEG images WebP support JavaScript and CSS minification Compression Image shrinking and metadata removal Advanced JavaScript compatibility JavaScript resource bundling and pre-loading   Selection of SSL/TLS protocol versions and cipher suites by virtual server or pool Until now, it has only been possible to configure the list of the allowed cipher suites, or permitted SSL/TLS protocol versions globally. With this release, it becomes possible to set the cipher suite list and permitted protocols separately for each virtual server or pool. This allows Traffic Manager administrators to increase the security of specific virtual servers, by restricting them to the more secure cipher suites, while still allowing other virtual servers to use a broader range of cipher suites for compatibility with older browsers.   NAT Enhancements The NAT capabilities of the Stingray Traffic Manager Virtual Appliance have been enhanced to allow a more comprehensive set of NAT configurations to be set through the GUI, REST, and SOAP APIs, and CLI. Additionally, NAT rules can now be defined with reference to Traffic IP groups and pools, for ease of configuration and maintenance.   General Information Platform Support Traffic Manager 9.6 is available in a range of virtual appliances, including VMware vSphere, KVM, XenServer, Amazon EC2, and Microsoft ® Windows Server 2012 with 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 Traffic Manager version 9.0 or later can be upgraded to version 9.6 (or later versions) by uploading the upgrade package using the software upgrade section of the administration server's web interface. ... View more

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.   Here is what Aptimizer Express does to your website to speed up pageloads.   Minify JavaScript and CSS Documents Minification removes unnecessary characters from JavaScript and CSS files, including whitespace (space, newline, tab) and developer comments. This significantly reduces the size of these files, resulting in a reduction in bandwidth usage and download time. Minification is a great feature for any website, but will yield particularly good results for websites that are CSS and/or JavaScript heavy.   Inline CSS Background Images Aptimizer Express includes image data in CSS files by encoding the data as Base64 and using a data URI to insert it in the style sheet. Including the image data in the style sheet eliminates a request/response roundtrip between the browser and server, which ultimately speeds up page load times. Background image inlining is good for websites with a lot of small, static images.   Resample Images Many websites download images that are higher quality than actually required. Aptimizer Express resamples JPEG images, which reduces the file size without any perceivable visual difference when compared to the original image. This feature is particularly valuable to websites that use a large number of JPEG images.   Remove Redundant Image Information Aptimizer Express automatically strips redundant metadata information from images resulting in smaller file sizes and reduced bandwidth usage. This data can include exif, date/time, and descriptive information. This feature is particularly valuable to websites with a larger number of images.   Version and Cache Resources When a user visits a website resources (images, web fonts, etc.) are downloaded and stored in a cache on the user’s computer. On subsequent page loads many websites will unnecessarily re-download these resources even though they haven’t changed. Resource versioning eliminates these unnecessary requests by intelligently naming resources so that downloads only occur when the resource is modified. Aptimizer Express applies versioning only to resources referenced via CSS, so will provide the most benefit to sites that utilize CSS heavily to load images and web font files.   Caching of Non-Versioned Resources For any resources that are not versioned, Aptimizer Express will modify the Cache-Expiry header so the resource persists in the client cache and isn’t downloaded every time the page is requested. This reduces the number of round trips on page loads and subsequently reduces page load times and bandwidth cost.   ETag Header ETags provide a way to determine whether the resource stored in a browser’s cache matches the one on the server. The first time a resource is downloaded, Aptimizer Express attaches a unique ETag header. On subsequent requests for the resource the browser sends the ETag back to the server, which the server checks and then only sends back the resource if it has been modified (resulting in a new ETag). If the resource has not been modified, Aptimizer Express responds with a 304 ‘Not Modified’ response (containing no data). ETags work together with versioning and caching on the browser to eliminate unnecessary downloads and will help significantly improve page load time and reduce bandwidth usage. ETags will provide benefit for any website.   Flatten CSS Aptimizer Express parses CSS documents and detects when additional style sheets are referenced via CSS @import tag. Aptimizer Express will insert, or ‘flatten’, the contents of any referenced (child) style sheets into the original (parent), eliminating the need for a separate roundtrip to download children style sheets from the server. This feature reduces page load times, especially for websites with a high number of CSS @import references.   Compress Resources Compressing resources is an easy to way to reduce the size of data being transferred from server to client, reducing bandwidth usage, and speeding up page load times. Once Aptimizer Express has applied other optimization techniques it applies deflate compression to resources before serving them to the client’s browser. Compression provides benefit to a wide range of sites. ... View more

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. ... View more

Stingray Traffic Manager provides a broad range of support for Microsoft SharePoint Riverbed Stingray Traffic Manager 9.3 offers broader support for Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and 2010 customers looking for advanced application performance, control, and reliability. Now you can optimize SharePoint applications (intranet or Internet) without the need to install Riverbed Stingray Aptimizer, web content optimization (WCO) software, on your application servers. Stingray Aptimizer now fully supports NTLM authentication as an add-on module to Stingray Traffic Manager or as a standalone proxy. Choose the deployment option that works best for you. Stingray Traffic Manager with Aptimizer add-on now supports: NTLM Authentication Failsafe shutdown Asynchronous optimizations Pre-built and tested profiles for SharePoint versions This advanced WCO capability with Stingray Aptimizer is available as a licensed add-on module for Stingray Traffic Manager 9.3. Stingray Traffic Manager 9.3 is available in a variety of virtual appliances today, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft® Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V™, XenServer, OracleVM, Riverbed Services Platform (RSP). Stingray Traffic Manager new features for Reliability, Performance, and Compatibility Reliability Failure is not an option when users are accessing your website. When problems do occur, Stingray Aptimizer has failsafe shutdown features where it will get out of the way and not interfere with the webpage processing. In this case, to ensure application uptime, the user will just get un-optimized content. Performance Stingray Aptimizer offers asynchronous performance capabilities where slow performing resource requests will not slow down optimizations because it will perform background optimization on that content and serve it up to the next user when it’s ready. This feature mitigates the WCO processing time delay during the initial request, because Stingray Aptimizer can perform this optimization in the background via a parallel task. Compatibility Stingray Aptimizer has pre-built and tested profiles for SharePoint versions that allow for optimizations that are safer and deliver more performance. By constantly testing the latest browsers, devices, and Internet protocol standards, we ensure that any changes are updated in our latest release. Stingray Aptimizer has better JavaScript compatibility where it now preserves the original references to the optimized content, i.e., the original URL. Stingray Aptimizer intelligently applies the best optimization accordingly; advanced optimization is applied to modern desktop and mobile web browsers. How Stingray Traffic Manager Works with the Aptimizer Add-on to Microsoft SharePoint Figure 1 - Stingray Traffic Manager with Aptimizer Add-on Module for Web Content Optimization WCO automatically makes web pages faster without the developer having to do additional work to 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. As the only complete and fully featured application delivery controller (ADC) in the industry, Stingray Traffic Manager is a high-performance software ADC for online, enterprise, and cloud applications that includes web application acceleration, web content optimization, and application security features in a single, integrated solution. Stingray Aptimizer is available as pure software for server install or as a pre-packaged software appliance for virtual and cloud environments. Other updates in Stingray Traffic Manager 9.3 Stingray Aptimizer is now supported on Solaris x86 and Linux platforms. Upgrading Customers with valid maintenance and support contracts will be able to download this release from their customer account in the Riverbed Support portal. The new documentation is also available on the support portal, and release notes are found where the software is downloaded. Virtual software appliances running version 9.0 or later can be upgraded to version 9.3 (or later versions) by uploading the upgrade package via the software upgrade section of the administration server's web interface. ... View more

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Virtual Appliance Riverbed® Stingray™ Traffic Manager 9.2 is now available as a software virtual appliance for Microsoft® Hyper-V™ R3 support on Windows Server 2012. Now Riverbed customers have the flexibility to use the Stingray platform to deploy application delivery services in any virtualized data center or cloud environment that is using Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V R3. With this solution, the advanced Layer 7 application services that Stingray provides, such as global load balancing, SSL offload, compression, caching, application firewall and web content optimization, can now also be used to scale applications in the Microsoft cloud and virtualized network environments. Stingray Traffic Manager is a high-performance software application delivery controller (ADC) that includes web application acceleration and application security into a single, integrated solution for online, enterprise, and cloud applications Stingray Traffic Manager version 9.2 is available in a variety of virtual appliances today, including VMware vSphere, XenServer, Oracle VM, Riverbed Steelhead® RSP, and Microsoft Hyper-V R3. Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V R3 Features Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V R3 includes a significant number of new features that let you take advantage of the latest hardware on servers, network adapters, and storage devices. This all leads to increased scalability of the data center and fewer physical servers needed to run more virtual machine workloads. Stingray customers can benefit from running Stingray Traffic Manager on Hyper-V and utilize these unique features: Hyper-V host scale and scale-up workload support. With this support, you can configure up to 320 logical processors on hardware, 4TB of physical memory, 64 virtual processors, and up to 1TB of memory on a virtual machine. You also can have up to 64 nodes and 4,000 virtual machines in a cluster. Dynamic memory improvements for Hyper-V. These improvements dramatically increase virtual machine consolidation ratios and improve reliability for restart operations. This can lead to lower costs, especially in environments that have many idle or lowload virtual machines (such as VDI). Resource metering in Hyper-V. Resource metering provides the ability to track and report the amount of data that is transferred per IP address or virtual machine, helping to ensure accurate showback and chargeback. New virtual hard disk format. This new format, called VHDX, is designed to better handle current and future workloads. It also addresses the technological demands of an enterprise’s evolving needs by increasing storage capacity, protecting data, improving quality performance on 4KB disks, and providing additional operation-enhancing features. Offloaded data transfer support in Hyper-V. Offloaded data transfer support allows the CPU to concentrate on the processing needs of the application rather than networking or storage overhead. Data center bridging. Data center bridging (DCB) takes advantage of current innovations to reduce the cost and difficulty of maintaining separate network, management, live migration, and storage traffic by using a modern, converged 10-gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) local area network (LAN). Virtual Fibre Channel in Hyper-V. This feature provides the ability to cluster the Hyper-V guest operating system over FibreChannel. Support for 4KB disk sectors in Hyper-V virtual disks. Support for 4,096 byte (4KB) disk sectors lets you take advantage of the emerging innovation in storage hardware that provides increased capacity and reliability. Quality of service. Quality of service (QoS) provides the ability to programmatically adhere to a service level agreement (SLA) by specifying the minimum bandwidth that is available to a virtual machine or a port. It prevents latency issues by allocating maximum bandwidth use for a virtual machine or port. Hyper-V R3 is supported for Windows Servers 2012 only; Windows Server 2008 is not supported. Microsoft’s Linux integration services (equivalent of VMware tools) are provided. This is a 64-bit only release with fully virtualized NICs. This release is supplied as a VHD and can be managed via PowerShell scripts. Stingray Traffic Manager Certified Microsoft Server Workloads Stingray Traffic Manager is also certified for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Lync as the leading software load balancer. Stingray Traffic Manager for Hyper-V is the perfect application delivery solution for Microsoft® SharePoint®, Microsoft® Exchange®, Microsoft® Lync™ and .NET web applications. With Stingray Traffic Manager, you get industry-leading advanced software load balancing, web content optimization, and application security to ensure your Microsoft applications are always available, scalable, and provide the best end-user experience. The strategic partnership between Riverbed and Microsoft ensures that organizations can confidently deploy qualified Riverbed application performance solutions, including WAN optimization, storage delivery, performance management, ADC, WCO, and cloud data protection in Microsoft environments. This helps joint customers increase productivity and efficiency, while enhancing business resilience and controlling costs using a variety of Microsoft products. Employees can share information without compromising the performance of day-today applications and management, while moving to the cloud, cutting costs, and supporting remote workers. Other updates in Stingray Traffic Manager 9.2 Amazon Web Services (AWS) enhancements Moving your applications to AWS brings new opportunities for businesses to grow and expand to new markets, but to be successful customers should look at how their applications will scale reliably and securely. Amazon ELB serves as a basic web service load balancer that distributes transactions across a dynamic pool of Amazon EC2 compute resources. Customers have found that they need to do much more than just load balancing. With Stingray Traffic Manager, they can improve availability, increase performance, and scale their applications at the same time. This is what Stingray Traffic Manager can do for you: Local Load Balancing: Ensure application availability, even across Amazon availability zones (AZ) Global Load Balancing: Balance across Amazon, multiple clouds, and your private data center SSL Offload: Accelerate SSL handling and cut server utilization by 1/3rd in many cases Caching and Compression: Deliver a faster user experience and cut bandwidth costs by 20-40% Stingray Aptimizer: Load webpages up to four times faster Stingray App Firewall: Protect against a broad range of web application attacks With Stingray Traffic Manager 9.2 AWS customers receive the following features: Bring Your Own License (BYOL): Customers can now upload a permanent license key, purchased from Riverbed, to a Developer Edition AMI from the AWS Marketplace. The developer mode AMI is now available on the same Amazon instance types as paid-for AMIs. Support for new AWS regions: Stingray Traffic Manager is now available for deployment in Sydney, Australia, and Sao Paulo, Brazil regions in addition to the existing AWS regions. VPC enhancements: The upgraded AMIs available on AWS Marketplace now can load balance across multiple availability zones (AZs) within a region. And Stingray Traffic Manager can now be clustered among a combination of VPC, EC2 and non-AWS instances. More detail on AWS enhancements and upgrades here: http://splash.riverbed.com/stingray/upgrade/aws Stingray Application Firewall upgrade Stingray Application Firewall has been updated to version 4.5. This release has the following new features: Enforcer Stingray TrafficScript® language update; default request size increased to 2MB Bypass for static content matching certain file types Ability to customize HTML error page with error IDs IPv6 support New ApplicationCreationWizard New PCI auditor mode VMware guest OS customizations With this release, customers will be able to configure IP addresses, hostname, etc. from vCenter when they clone a STM VA from a running instance or from a template. This feature will prevent IP address conflicts when cloning machines and enables automated deployment. Virtual Appliance OS upgrade The underlying OS for Stingray Traffic Manager instances has been updated significantly for this release for reliability and security, and consequent updates have been applied to installed packages. Riverbed Cloud Steelhead discovery agent upgrade This release updates the Cloud Steelhead® discovery agent and allows traffic for multiple local IP addresses to be accelerated. All traffic IP addresses on each Stingray Traffic Manager are registered so that they will be accelerated if the Stingray Traffic Manager starts managing a Traffic IP Group (TIP). Upgrading Customers with valid maintenance and support contracts will be able to download this release from their customer account in the Riverbed Support portal. The new documentation is also available at the Support portal, and release notes are found where the software is downloaded.  Riverbed Support: Software - Stingray Traffic Manager Appliances running version 9.0 or later can be upgraded to version 9.2 (or later versions) by uploading the upgrade package via the Software Upgrade section of the Administration Server's web interface. ... View more

Riverbed Professional Services is giving a 5 day Technical Class on Stingray Traffic Manager (which includes Stingray Application Firewall and Stingray Aptimizer). This class has plenty of traffic script programming and labs that should challenge anyone. The class is being held at Riverbed HQ in sunny San Francisco April 8-12 th . Riverbed Partners get a big discount. Here is the official announcement: This 5-day solution-focused class offers an introduction to the Riverbed® Stingray® Application Delivery Controller solution with hands-on installation, configuration, and reporting experience using the Stingray Traffic Manager, Stingray Aptimizer and Stingray Application Firewall solution with an introduction to TrafficScript. Here is the outline: http://www.riverbeduniversity.com/assets/courses/P8605.32.ADC200CourseOutline.pdf Registration: http://www.cvent.com/Events/Calendar/Calendar.aspx?cal=d3b6513c-867f-4035-819b-657ed775ec10 ... View more