Riverbed Releases V2.1 of Whitewater OS

Riverbed
Technology Inc. announced Whitewater
OS version 2.1 with support for Amazon Glacier storage and Google
Cloud storage.

It increases cost savings and high data
durability from cloud storage services, improving DR readiness. In
addition, the company introduced larger virtual Whitewater appliances
that allow customers to support larger data sets, improve DR
capabilities, and manage multiple Whitewater appliances from a single
window with a management console. These enhancements help enterprises
use cloud storage to meet backup requirements, modernize data
management strategies, and overcome challenges created by data
growth.

"Once created, most
unstructured data is rarely accessed after 30-90 days. Leveraging the
cloud for storing these data sets makes a lot of sense, particularly
given the attractive prices of storage services designed for
long-term such as Amazon Glacier," said Dan Iacono, research
director from IDC’s storage practice. "The ability of cloud
storage devices to cache locally and provide access to recent data
provides real benefits from an operational cost perspective to avoid
unnecessary transfer costs from the cloud."

Cloud Storage Ecosystem Expansion
The company is offering customers
choice and flexibility for data protection by adding Glacier
and Google Cloud storage to its cloud storage ecosystem. Whitewater
customers using Glacier cloud storage have access to recent
backup data while enjoying pricing from Amazon as low as 1c/GB/Month
– approximately eight times cheaper than other currently available
cloud storage offerings. 

In addition, the high data durability
offered by Amazon cloud storage services and the ability to access
the data from any location with an Internet connection improves an
organization’s DR readiness.

Larger Virtual Whitewater Appliances
With the larger virtual Whitewater
appliances, the company allows customers preferring virtual
appliances to protect larger data sets as well as simplify DR. The
virtual appliances support local cache sizes of 4 or 8TB and
integrate with data protection applications as well as all popular
cloud storage services. To streamline management for enterprise wide
deployments, WWOS 2.1 includes management capabilities that enable
monitoring and administration of all Whitewater devices from a single
console with one-click drill down into any appliance. 

"We have been successfully
using Riverbed Whitewater appliances for backup with Amazon S3 in our
facilities in Germany, Switzerland, and the U.S. since June 2012,"
said Drew Bartow, senior information technology engineer at Tipper
Tie, Inc. "We were eager to test the Whitewater 3010 appliance
with Amazon Glacier and the total time to configure and start moving
data to Glacier was just 24 minutes. With Glacier and Whitewater we
could potentially save considerably on backup storage costs."

"The features in WWOS 2.1 and
the larger virtual appliances drastically change the economics of
data protection," said Ray Villeneuve, VP corporate
development, at Riverbed. "With our advanced, in-line
deduplication and optimization technologies, Whitewater shrinks data
stored in the cloud by up to 30 times on average – for example,
Whitewater customers can now store up to 100 terabytes of backup data
that is not regularly accessed in Amazon Glacier for as little as
$2,500.00 per year. The operational cost savings and high data
durability from cloud storage services improve DR readiness and will
continue to rapidly accelerate the movement from tape-based and
replicated disk systems to cloud storage." 

More than 22,000 organizations
worldwide depend on Riverbed to understand, optimize and consolidate
their IT infrastructure, through solutions that overcome performance
issues caused by distance, distributed computing, and ever increasing
amounts of data. As IT organizations embark on strategic initiatives
to virtualize, consolidate and migrate workloads into cloud
environments, users are moved farther from their data. Slow
applications, slow file transfers and inefficient websites can
negatively impact the performance and success of these initiatives.
Riverbed transforms IT performance by providing solutions spanning
WAN optimization, edge-VSI, application-aware network performance
management, application performance management, application delivery
controllers, web content optimization, and cloud data protection. By
providing a portfolio of performance solutions that
deliver anywhere, any-application optimization, Riverbed enables
organizations to increase productivity and efficiency, while
enhancing business resilience and controlling costs.