Steelhead Reviews

The primary use case of Steelhead is as a CDR application and a second use case is for optimization. We are global distributors for Riverbed and I'm a technical engineer.

Scalable data referencing is the most valuable feature developed by Riverbed. It's also great that you can optimize multiple applications and get better reporting. These days, everybody is looking for visibility and Steelhead enables you to see what's running on your network. You can easily filter the site, the name of an application, the port, source, or destination IP.

The application response time of the solution can be improved. 

I've been using this solution for 13 years. 

The stability is good overall. 

The solution is scalable, I've deployed it for more than 20,000 users.

We've had a good experience with technical support. They have a toll-free number and are happy to carry out a remote session to troubleshoot any issues.

Positive

The initial setup is very easy. 

Licensing costs are reasonable. 

We've compared with other vendors but none have the scalable data referencing (SDR) feature, the mobile client software to optimize for roaming users.

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

1. Inbound QoS
2. Outbound QoS
3. Path Selection
4. SSL optimization
5. The breadth of scope in the “Reports” tab….(Top Talkers, Current Connections, Application Visibility, Optimized throughput, Traffic Summary and many more)

By utilizing the RSP slots we can create a virtual domain controller and/or member server at our remote sites to take care of DHCP, DNS, LDAP auth, Server Print Queues, etc.

If no local file shares (Storage) are needed this is a nice way to save money on hardware and maintenance costs.

SteelCentral Controller global QoS policy should be able to be implemented from the CLI vice only the Web GUI.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

It is very good at optimizing WAN traffic and it has so many more features on top of that which help global enterprises monitor, identify and police traffic by application type, IP subnet, source, and/or destination.  Amazingly efficient tool to use when troubleshooting WAN issues..(customer complaints and more).

Mainly "generic features" used for data reduction and TCP window optimization. Some applicative specific optimizations used.

Great added value for replication flows between far away datacenters : => Data to transfer dramatically reduced, lowering WAN links costs. => TCP window scalling permitting to accelerate WAN transfers for old systems not using this feature natively and also for recent systems using less optimized TCP window scalling.

Applicative specifics optimizations shall always be improved.

2 years

Regarding system, upgrades issues occurs with old generations (XX20) but they are now fixed. Regarding hardware, disks sometimes crash on long time installed appliances when it is powercycled but it is the bad side of using magnetic disks to lower big storage space.

Not really.

Not really.

Customer Service: Customer service is really efficient. Riverbed TAC access is quick and easy.Technical Support: Sometimes, TAC responses must be challenged but the service is globally valuable.

No.

In-house implementation after a vendor team POC and an in-house lab.

Cisco WAAS

Aside from optimizing WAN connections between our remote offices and the home office, the charts/real-time graphs proved to be valuable during troubleshooting over-utilization issues. Easily, we were able to determine source/destination and how much data they have used.

We've increased throughput between remote offices, increasing our efficiency.

It provides easy-to-read data to review troubles within the network which allowed us to resolve the issue much quicker.

Personally, my expertise with this device I feel is too low to determine what areas could be improved. I did use this device for 3+ years while with another job and administered the web interface and even jumped into the CLI with support at times. However, I have no professional training.

3+ years

No issues with deployment of this hardware. Although I believe it may not be recommended the device is essentially plug-n-play, meaning the database will determine what networks to optimize without you having to specify every subnet.

At times, like all network devices there were issues, but support was there to help us understand/resolve any issues that we could not handle. Even if it meant RMA, we would receive a new Steelhead the next day and be able to replace it.

I did not deal much with scaling as the network didn't grow while I was there, but we did have the Riverbed CMC (I believe is the acronym - central management console?) Having this would have made scaling easy, I assume.

Customer Service:

Customer service was what I would expect out of every company. They took care of us when we needed them to, including replacing the device with minimal questions.

Technical Support:

Tech support was great as well, they were able to remote into my computer and then use the putty session from there to gather information needed or resolve the issue.

I am not aware of the company using any other solution. When I joined they were already using Riverbed Steelhead.

I was not there for the initial setup, but I did replace one remote office steelhead and that was easy to do

I implemented through a in-house one, no rating to give to a vendor team. We handled everything if it was over our heads we had their tech support.

I would not know this information as I was only dealing with the administration of the device. These devices were extremely valuable as when one went down or optimization turned off, everyone noticed.

I would not have valuable / correct information on pricing or licensing as I did not handle that portion. I'm sure like anything, if you want all the bells and whistles expect to pay some $$.

No other options were evaluated, to my knowledge. I am not even aware of other WAN optimizers. I'm sure there are some, when the time comes I'm sure I'll do some research.

No additional comments or advice regarding Riverbed Steelhead. The devices were great, and proved to be a very valuable asset to the company.

We did a data center migration for one client between two countries in Latin America. The challenge for this company was that they needed to send a large amount of traffic from Argentina to Mexico in a very short time. Without Riverbed WAN Optimization, it took one hour to send one gig of traffic, but with Riverbed, one gig of traffic was sent in five minutes. From one hour to five minutes, it had a big impact.

A feature we like is data streamlining. Riverbed does packet deduplication, packet compression and uses something like simple data referencing to compress the data. If one gig of traffic is sent to one link, that gig of traffic coming from the packet is only 100 mbps, so the compression of Riverbed is very powerful.

Another is transport streamlining, which includes TCP optimization. The window size of the TCP protocol is achieved in order to transfer more data in the TCP section despite the endpoint. The endpoint transfer was very slow, but it doesn't matter because with Riverbed in the middle, it can handle more quantities of traffic.

For application streamlining, where the HTTP application previously had a lot of traffic, Riverbed recognizes HTTP protocols and it can optimize the process because it can create the HTTP server. Normally, the browser and web server agree and compress the traffic, but if Riverbed is in between, it strips the compression from the browser and Riverbed does its own compressions, which is more powerful, and hence, the application runs faster for the user.

Also, for HTTP, Riverbed does caching so it can store data from all the user traffic. It keeps track of the HTTP data locally. Traveling into the server isn't necessary. They can retrieve the information locally because there is a local Riverbed.

It's for a very specific use case. It's not for everything. Although the solution is very powerful, it doesn't apply to all enterprises.

There is only one feature that needs to be improved. In the case of a High Availability event, if we lose the primary Steelhead, all the connections need to be restarted. If we lose the primary Steelhead that handles the optimization, the secondary Steelhead cannot handle the same High Availability. Some applications will restart automatically, but for some other applications, like STP, the users need to start a new session. If we load a primary firewall, the secondary firewall usually handles all the active connections, but in Riverbed, this isn't the case. We lose all the active connections at the moment of failure.

I have been using Steelhead for five years. 

I would rate Steelhead a nine out of ten because the product is very stable; it never fails. It does compression and application optimization very well. 

Riverbed can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud as well. We can deploy it in Amazon, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. The solution is in the marketplace of every car provider and it also optimizes Office 365 traffic, since there's a partnership with Riverbed and Microsoft. We can deploy on-premise, we can deploy on IaaS or we can deploy on PaaS.

In the past, the internet links of the MPLS link were full capacity (one or two Mbps) and it was very expensive. Nowadays, the prices of the MPLS links are cheaper and the capacity is increased.

On-premises

Management purchased the product initially for its ability to reduce WAN traffic, especially to overseas partners. However, lately it has also become a valuable traffic shaping tool via it's ability to set QoS marking on traffic we specify.

It has allowed us to purchase lower bandwidth from our WAN vendors than we normally would have without the Steelhead units.

Setting up QoS marking is not all that intuitive. I would like to see all settings needed to set QoS up on one page rather than three or four.

We've used it for approximately five years.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

Some types of data flows between servers don't always lend themselves to being optimized by the Steelhead unit. These data flows must have bypass rules set up in order to properly pass traffic.

We have had no issues with the scalability.

Riverbed has excellent technical support. Even on non-critical cases I have always gotten a support engineer. Most support staff are very understandable.

The initial setup is very straightforward. Give the unit an IP address for management, an IP address for your WAN segment and place it inline between your local network and your WAN. Steelhead will automatically find peers and set up peering.

We implemented it via in-house team. My advice is to try setup yourself and if you need assistance, call the support line. They will get you up and running.

I am not involved in the purchasing or licensing.

This was our first WAN optimization solution. This product was selected by upper management. I did not have a role in the selection process.

Although I'm sure this is obvious to most it may not be to some when you make your initial purchase you need to buy at least two. The SteelCentral Controller is not strictly needed as all the units can be managed individually, but the more units you deploy, it becomes more difficult to maintain a standard configuration across devices. This is where the SCC comes in very handy.

• MPLS through OSPF
• VLAN

Through this product, we can easily find the bottlenecks and where the traffic occurs or generated in the network. It also helps to find the shortest path to send our data from source to destination through the MPLS network. Then, we can handle it through this technology.

Not all devices are available for creating the topology as per the need on your network, such as the three switch router or firewall in this product. Nor do they provide help for putting actual and exact data for creating devices as per requirement.

There have been no issues deploying it.

We have had some issues with licence acquisition following a hanging server or power issues. Sometimes it can take a long time to resolve the issue with Riverbed support.

We have had no issues

7/10

We also use OPNET Modeller Academic v14.0 which is free and is easily downloaded and installed on our system. With it, there is no proper way to create the topology unlike in OPNET SP Guru Network Planner 17.0. Things missing from it are the ability to create devices and the inability to create access permissions to upload to the network configuration to my existing network. These need to be uploaded though Wireshark tools, the router or other methods.

It's straightforward to implement.

We had some issues but they were resolved with the help of the vendor team.

Its licensing is for a single machine. If we want to use it on more than one machine, it doesn’t work following the install installed. This should be improved as the cost for a licence is very high and we are unable to purchase this product for using each user.

I've found the appliance to be the most valuable. Also, it's easy to use and configure.

It's helped to reduce WAN traffic by approximately 60%.

I would like to see more IP services, perhaps aligned better Netflow stats. The Central Management Console (CMC) newly named SteelCentral Controller (SCC) has rudimentary netflow capabilities, but it doesn’t have particularly in-depth data. I realize the need for a dedicated NetFlow environment but because the SteelHead technology deal with flow and not IP this is not capable.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

The SteelHead product is very good, easy to configure, however a home page which can be altered would enhance the gui