Forget metal, Riverbed shows some "Granite"

The company introduces a novel, less-expensive architectural approach to edge server consolidation in the data center

Riverbed Technology has announced a new architectural approach, called edge virtual server infrastructure (edge-VSI), that is touted to do for edge servers what virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) did for desktops: it allows IT organisations to consolidate and manage all their edge servers in the data center.

Unlike VDI, however, claims Riverbed in a media release, edge-VSI does this while delivering 20-50% lower total cost of ownership (TCO). This it achieves through the new Riverbed Granite solutions.

With Granite, global enterprises can achieve complete consolidation of edge applications, servers and storage to the data center, while delivering services to the edge of the enterprise as if they were local. Edge-VSI is complementary to wide area network (WAN) optimization, accelerating performance for applications and use cases not addressed by any WAN optimization approach today.

Granite does what was previously thought impossible: it allows storage to be decoupled from its server over thousands of milesand actually work as if the storage were local to the server. The user gets uncompromised performance, while IT is able to manage backup, provision, patch, expand, and protect the data for its far-flung enterprise all within the four walls of the data center.

Organizations that deploy Granite are expected to save up to 50% cost over traditional approaches to managing distributed infrastructure by eliminating costly backup and recovery processes in remote locations, consolidating underutilized edge servers and storage, and cutting many of the general IT administration costs, including travel associated with managing infrastructure at the edge.

Granite solves bandwidth and latency problems over distributed networks, but lower in the technology stack at the block level making it possible to deliver global storage and server infrastructure extended from the data center over the WAN. By adding file system intelligence to the block layer, it, among other things, parallelizes interactions between server and storage that were otherwise sequential. This innovation means that distributed data and servers can now reside in one place and the performance for users at the edge will not be impacted, all the while eliminating up to 50% of the costs associated with managing distributed infrastructure.

Granite requires two components: Granite Core, a physical or virtual appliance in the data center, and Granite Edge, a service running on a Steelhead EX in the branch office. By combining Steelhead EX + Granite, organizations can take advantage of greater consolidation and centralization with a powerful combination of WAN optimization, virtual services platform and innovative block-storage optimization. Alternatively, Granite Edge is available as a standalone appliance.

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