Riverbed introduces Cascade Express 460 Virtual Edition

Riverbed Technology has announced a virtual edition of Riverbedâ Cascadeâ Express 460, which provides visibility into private cloud or software-defined data centre environments running virtualised networks so IT teams can quickly view network and application performance and troubleshoot issues before end users notice. An all-in-one network performance monitoring solution, Cascade Express 460 Virtual Edition, part of the Riverbedâ Performance ManagementTM product family, combines monitoring of traditional and virtualised network environments in a single virtual appliance that can be deployed easily into any type of environment.
Recognised by Gartner as the only “leader” in the magic quadrants for both Application Performance Monitoring (2013) and Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (2014), the Riverbed Performance Management family of products are the only solutions that combine user experience and application and network performance management to detect and enable customers to resolve issues before they impact end users.

“Software-defined data centres built on private cloud technology offer tremendous savings and flexibility, so businesses are increasingly adopting this approach to provision new services on demand,” said Dimitri Vlachos, vice president of marketing and products for Riverbed. “Cascade Express Virtual Edition enables customers to leverage powerful compute and network virtualisation platforms while providing advanced application-aware network performance management. Customers gain a holistic view of their virtual and physical infrastructure, allowing them to have complete insight into application performance regardless of where the application is hosted and how it is delivered.”

”We first deployed Steelheads to accelerate our remote offices’ access to services in our data centre. Shortly afterwards, we purchased Riverbed Cascade Express to give us visibility into our virtual remote desktop farm,” said Chris Niesen, IT Engineering Lead of Braun Intertec, an environmental engineering consulting and testing firm headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “Our goal is to move from a 95% to a 100% virtualised environment, so we’re really happy to see Riverbed come out with this new virtualised form factor for Cascade Express 460. Whether it’s between data centres or in the cloud, it gives us the flexibility to deploy Riverbed solutions in any kind of IT environment we choose and to move our monitoring where it’s needed.”

Riverbed Cascade Express Virtual Edition runs on VMware vSphereâ and includes the following capabilities:
· End-to-end monitoring, analytics and reporting. Avoid impact to the business from bad apps with advanced analytics that automatically detect, isolate and pinpoint changes in performance. Map cloud application dependencies to accelerate troubleshooting across complex application ecosystems.
· High-speed packet capture and storage with deep packet inspection of more than 1,000 popular applications combined with robust flow collection and deduplication for automated traffic and performance analysis.
· A concurrent user license of Riverbed Cascade Pilot for graphically analysing traffic data on the Cascade Express appliance without having to transfer large trace files across the network.
· Support for network virtualisation and overlay networks, such as VMware NSXTM, to give operations teams a unified view of network and application performance across the physical and virtual infrastructure.

“Network virtualisation transforms data centre network operations in the software-defined data centre,” said Hatem Naguib, vice president, networking and security at VMware. “By deploying Riverbed Cascade Express Virtual Edition in conjunction with our VMware NSXTM network virtualisation platform, customers can gain unified visibility into application and service delivery performance to help provide the best possible user experience.”

As an example of the platform integrations and how the synergistic capabilities of Riverbed solutions benefit customers, organisations that have Riverbed Steelhead appliances can leverage this investment to send both flow and packet data to Riverbed Cascade Express 460 for detailed analysis of Steelhead-optimised WAN and quality-of-service (QoS) settings by application. Riverbed Cascade Express 460 analyses both non-optimised and optimised WAN environments, enabling IT teams to better plan for WAN optimisation, assess the impact of the deployment and accurately quantify the benefits of WAN optimisation.

Riverbed Performance Management and the Riverbed Application Performance Platform
Riverbed Performance Management provides enterprise-class end-user, application and network performance management. Riverbed delivers visibility, analytics and insight empowering companies to leverage IT to innovate and differentiate from the competition. RPM drastically reduces the time and effort required to develop, deploy and ensure application performance. Its solutions are leveraged throughout today’s rapid application lifecycles and across IT operations and development teams, providing a centralised and common solution to maximise efficiency, performance and productivity in today’s application-driven world.

Riverbed Performance Management is part of the Riverbed Application Performance Platform™, the most complete platform for location-independent computing that gives companies the flexibility to host applications and data in the locations that best serve the business while ensuring flawless application delivery to better leverage global resources, radically reduce the cost of running their business and maximise employee productivity.