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Deploying in a network


Overview: 

This reviews how to put a riverbed into your current environment.  The changes here are related to what you need to do to everything but the riverbeds themselves.  

An average network would look something like (a) in the drawing below, with a firewall and a bunch of systems below it.  Riverbed suggests that you deploy the unit "in-line" to the traffic flow (b), between two devices.  Inline is nice, but physically inline is scary, as there is no way to undo this without physically going to the device and changing the wiring.  I would suggest avoiding plugging the riverbed directly "in-line", and instead, putting it to the side (c), and routing traffic through it.  This way you can remove the riverbed from the flow with a simple change on the switch configuration.  

In this example, a normal network would look something like (d), with the computers defaulting directly to the firewall.  To enable routing through the riverbed, all we do is create a second VLAN (e) that is in the same broadcast domain and connect all the hosts to it.  By default this will force all host traffic though the riverbed on the way out, and all inbound traffic though the riverbed on the way to the hosts.  A simple switch change can enable and disable this allowing you the ability to remotely put the riverbed inline or not.  




Change: 

To enable what we have reviewed above, review the following
  • Switch Change: How to route traffic through the riverbed though vlan-ing.
  • Firewall Change: some changes needed to allow riverbeds specially modified packets through the firewall.  




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