Recently, Riverbed released the new Riverbed Granite product line to provide enterprise-class solutions for server and data integration. With increased capacity and performance, IT managers can now extend Granite's advantages to larger branch offices, as well as to data-intensive applications that were previously difficult or impossible to integrate.

According to relevant data, Granite technology enables branch offices of companies of all sizes to no longer require remote local servers and data, and to focus on secure data centers without compromising the branch user experience. This new architectural approach can focus on backup operations and move data away from high-risk locations while increasing agility and reducing the IT costs of managing remote offices. In order to succeed in today's dynamic architecture and application environment, IT managers need flexibility, security, and control capabilities, while at the same time they must meet the performance conditions that enterprise users are concerned about. Granite concentrates these advantages into a single solution.

This release includes the new Granite 2.5 software - providing Fibre Channel support for existing iSCSI, which enables Granite solutions to support more than 90% of the enterprise-class storage array market. Granite 2.5 provides automatic snapshots and simplified support for existing data center-level backup and recovery software to enhance data protection. This news is based on EMC E-Lab's 2012 certification of Granite and EMC VMAX, and EMC E-Lab's certification of Granite and EMC VNX in June 2013. With the addition of the new, exclusive Steelhead EX 1360 device, Granite software can be configured in the device, so Granite 2.5 performance can be further improved. The Steelhead EX 1360 appliance integrates larger data storage sets into the data center, providing greater capacity and better performance. Granite 2.5, together with the new Steelhead EX 1360 appliance, provides enterprise-level solutions for server and data integration, enabling organizations to deploy applications anywhere, achieving high performance and reliability.

Further Integrate Enterprise Storage Arrays

Granite 2.5 software adds Fibre Channel support to the virtual Granite Core, expanding the consolidation of enterprise-class storage arrays from EMC, NetApp and IBM. Leading analysts have found that nearly 70% of companies deployed fiber channel external disk solutions in 2013. Many organizations choose to deploy Fibre Channel storage solutions for high-speed, low-latency transport capabilities and interconnect multiple storage devices to better use and share storage capabilities in the data center. In addition to iSCSI already supported in the data center, the addition of Fibre Channel storage solutions means that Granite solutions now support more than 90% of the enterprise storage array market, providing enterprises with branch office large dataset storage consolidation More flexibility.

Mike Rinken, IT director of engineering design and consulting firm Mazzetti, said: From the point of view of storage and data protection, the greater flexibility that Granite 2.5 brings to the data center is a great success. For our company, a large number of CAD files have been transferred to a parametric modeling dataset with a more collaborative advantage. The more powerful Granite Edge devices have become more significant. We can even integrate more data to ensure that branch office users get the required local performance. We are happy to have the flexibility to use Fibre Channel storage. At the same time, Riverbed also impressed us by expanding its storage advantages by providing more powerful devices.

Backup and restore simplification

Consolidating branch office data into data centers, Granite enables organizations to no longer require branch backup and recovery systems, transfer data protection operations to secure data centers, and data protection is performed by skilled storage personnel. Granite 2.5 further simplifies data protection by strengthening support for industry-leading backup and recovery software solutions such as Symantec NetBackup. Granite 2.5 also offers an enhanced version of the centralized management user interface, as well as simplified scheduling based on hourly, daily, or weekly application snapshots captured by the branch office and captured in the data center. As a result, Granite 2.5 provides a single point of management for branch office snapshot scheduling and simplified data protection, thereby reducing disaster recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO/RPO).

Rohit Tellis, Director of IT at Alamos Gold, a Canadian gold developer with operations around the world, said: “We have deployed Granite to help us centralize data and application management and eliminate the hardware footprint of data-intensive branch offices, leading to cost savings. The enhancement of data protection helps to further ensure that the centralized backup process is easier to manage.

New Steelhead EX 1360 device

Remote offices and branch offices vary in size, and there are various applications and data storage needs. The Steelhead EX1360 appliance integrates larger data sets into the data center while ensuring business continuity. New devices provide a native application speed experience that typically requires high-performance storage access such as high-capacity transaction databases and Geographic Information System (GIS) data modeling files, requiring high read/write (I/O) operations per second (IOPS). In addition, the new Steelhead appliance can help companies achieve greater data workloads and increase data volume. It can be locked into the device cache to improve the branch office's ability to handle larger data sets, even in the event of a WAN failure, to maintain business efficiency. The new Steelhead EX 1360 device is suitable for a wider range of enterprise organizations and helps them deploy Granite storage delivery solutions. Even those branch offices that use proprietary applications and heavy computing and storage workloads do not have to worry about performance degradation and reduced efficiency.