How Modern Enterprises Can Securely Optimize SMB Traffic with Riverbed Acceleration
- By Joscelyn Herzberg
- 30-Jan-2024
In the fast-paced world of modern enterprises, employee productivity relies heavily on seamless access to files, irrespective of their location. File sharing is a cornerstone of collaboration, especially for organizations dealing with data-intensive applications like computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), or managing extensive client documents. Slow file transfers can cripple employee experience and hinder productivity, making efficient solutions crucial.
The role of Server Message Block (SMB) protocol
Server Message Block (SMB) protocol is a popular choice for network file-sharing, providing secure remote access to files, printers, and devices. However, the challenge arises when SMB encounters Wide Area Network (WAN) latency, which affects network and application performance. As organizations increasingly operate with decentralized workforces and diverse resources, optimizing file-sharing becomes paramount. This is where WAN acceleration becomes a key player to reduce latency, optimize bandwidth, and ultimately enhance employee productivity.
Why WAN acceleration for SMB protocol?
WAN acceleration involves technologies that enhance data transfer efficiency between centralized data centers and remote locations across a WAN. Common performance killers like network congestion and high latency can significantly impact application performance, leading to decreased productivity and revenue loss.
The challenge of SMB WAN acceleration
Despite the clear need for optimizing SMB traffic, many organizations face challenges due to the protocol’s security features, such as signing and encryption. Optimizing SMB traffic requires decrypting and re-encrypting data. Security rules and regulations often complicate this interaction, hindering deployment and impacting application performance.
Optimizing SMB traffic with Riverbed solutions
Riverbed Acceleration solutions offer a way forward for organizations seeking to optimize SMB traffic securely. Riverbed SteelHead, Client Accelerator, and Cloud Accelerator deliver faster and secure application performance across distributed enterprises:
- SteelHead: A vital component of Riverbed Acceleration solutions, SteelHead optimizes and accelerates network traffic and application performance, reducing bandwidth consumption by up to 99% and accelerating SMB traffic up to 40 times, even when signed or encrypted.
- Client Accelerator: Extending SteelHead’s capabilities to remote employees, Client Accelerator operates on end-user laptops, providing access to critical applications with speed and security, irrespective of location.
- Cloud Accelerator: Ensuring quick and secure delivery of workloads, Cloud Accelerator optimizes cloud-based file and workload transfers, accelerating migration, meeting SLAs for cloud backup, reducing data egress costs, and stabilizing cloud workload performance.
Riverbed’s SMB acceleration deployment models
To ensure full latency and bandwidth optimization, Riverbed offers three deployment models that cater to different security postures and IT structures:
- Model 1: SteelHead directly connected to Active Directory
- Simple configuration with widget support for each appliance.
- Supports both Kerberos and NTLM authentication.
- Model 2: Deploy the Riverbed WinSec Controller
- Offers better security posture with a Tier 0 appliance.
- Compliant with the Microsoft Enterprise Access Model.
- Supports greater latency (up to 110 ms) between WinSec Controller and domain controller(s).
- Model 3: Domain Independent SteelHead Kerberos Only (DISKO)
- Does not require SteelHead appliance to join the domain.
- Exclusively supports Kerberos authentication.
Riverbed customers find success with SMB optimization
Many of Riverbed’s customers have found success in optimizing SMB file sharing and have gained significant improvements in efficiency and cost savings. An engineering firm experienced a remarkable increase in download speeds by 86%, coupled with a drastic reduction in file transfer times, plummeting from 28 minutes to less than 4 minutes.
Similarly, Quarles & Brady, a legal service provider, witnessed a transformation in their document transfer speeds, which were cut down from minutes to mere seconds. This acceleration in performance was complemented by a simplification of their technological infrastructure, leading to reduced expenditures on bandwidth and operational fees, further showcasing the substantial impact of Riverbed’s SMB optimization solutions.
The benefits of Riverbed WAN acceleration
Riverbed WAN acceleration solutions employ advanced optimization techniques, including transport streamlining, data streamlining, and application streamlining to improve the performance of protocols and applications over WANs dramatically. These technical benefits translate into increased employee satisfaction, IT savings, and improved application performance.
Choose a best-in-class solution for optimizing SMB traffic
SMB traffic optimization is no longer an option but a necessity for modern distributed enterprises.
Riverbed provides a comprehensive solution, offering multiple deployment models based on security needs and helping organizations achieve faster SMB transfer speeds and significant data reduction. The benefits extend to increased employee satisfaction, reduced IT costs, and improved application performance.
Want to learn more about Riverbed’s WAN acceleration solutions for SMB optimization? Download our latest white paper.