Written by Stuart Ekins on June 25, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Exinda Networks have announced the release of their latest code, version 6.3. This release has a number of enhancements, some of which are going to be very well received.

The full release notes are on Exinda’s support site, but the highlights are:

Acceleration and performance

*  SMB2 Acceleration

*  Ability to accelerate Microsoft SMB2 traffic.

*  SMB (CIFS) and SMB2 Acceleration Object Cache

*  Ability to store complete files in cache.

*  Content Pre-Population for SMB (CIFS), SMB2 and HTTP

*Ability to pre-populate the SMB object cache and/or WAN memory cache by downloading files via CIFS or HTTP on demand or at a scheduled time interval. This is a much sought-after feature, as it allows administrators to ensure that the Exinda cache is “refreshed” at quiet times. So, for example, files from the data centre can be transmitted down to the branch office appliances over night, offering superior performance for users first thing in the morning.

Visbility, reporting and control

* Time Savings Benefits Report

* Demonstrate the amount of time acceleration of application traffic saved.

*  WAN Right-Size Reporting

*  Display the percentage of time applications or application groups fall within a configurable utilization level.

§  Asymmetric Route Detection and Alerting

§  Detection and alerting when network traffic is being routed asymmetrically. 

§  Layer 7 Subtype Matching

§  Ability to match on Layer 7 sub-type attributes, such as those application which are carried inside HTTP e.g. Dropbox, iTunes, etc

§  VC (Virtual Circuit) Level Connection Limiting

§  Ability to limit the number of TCP/UDP connections passing through a virtual circuit, with admission control.

§  New, improved and updated application definitions

§  Provides improved application visibility, greater understanding of the applications in use, and more opportunities for granular application control

Administrative

§  Storage UI to manage HDD disk allocation

§  Allows the redistribution of disk resources between services. If you don’t use a particular Exinda service, you can now allocate it’s disc space to a server you do use.

§  ACL configuration for restricting Management Access

§  Restrict access to management services (telnet, ssh, http, https and snmp) to a specific set of IP addresses.

§  Log a TAC Case Directly from the Appliance UI

§  Allow the creation of support cases and the transmission of diagnostics information directly from the appliance.

Virtualisation Support

§  Not a lot is made of this in the release notes, but the ability to run Exinda within a virtual appliance is going to be of great interest to those managing data centre networks and wanting the convenience and resilience of having their WAN optimisation solution follow their virtual machines around the infrastructure. More will follow on this soon – suffice to say that we’ve tested it here and it behaves, well, just like the Exinda appliances you’re already used to.

Compatibility

§  ExOS 6.3 has some substantial changes and improvements, however this means that it will not be suitable for some legacy appliances and others may need memory upgrades.

§  The supported platforms are  2060, 2061, 4060, 4061, 5000, 6010, 6060, 7000, 8060, 10060, VMWare, Citrix Xen. Most significantly, if you have a 2000 or 4000 unit, you should not apply this update.

§  Those with a device with 2GB RAM should consider upgrading to 4GB to ensure best performance and avoid swapping RAM to disc

§  If you want to get the benefits from ExOS 6.3 but do not have suitable hardware, please contact us and we’ll help you get the best deal on an upgrade.

If you’re already one of our Exinda clients, please feel free to get in touch to discuss 6.3 deployment. If you’re new to Exinda and want to learn more, please contact us.

Technical Features of the Exinda ExOS 6.1 Release

Exinda Edge Cache™
When web objects are downloaded from the Inter-net or across WAN links, the Exinda Edge Cache stores them at the network's edge. When subsequent requests come for the same material, the content is quickly delivered from the Exinda Edge Cache, without the need to re-download the data over the WAN.

The result is the ability to experience LAN speeds over the WAN, and provide users with a better network experience.

Support for IPv6
Exinda simultaneously provides all of the capabilities for IPv6 as it does for IPv4 traffic, enabling network managers to see, control, optimize and report on both types of traffic on the WAN while service providers and enterprise clients manage the transition between v4 and v6.

Optimization Scalability
Exinda has significantly increased the number of concurrent accelerated connections on each of its multi-core appliances by multithreading several core Optimization modules, which allows multiple instances of these modules to run in parallel, resulting in a greater number of accelerated connections being supported per appliance.

Enhanced reporting
With ExOS 6.1, Exinda has expanded its reporting from Top 10 graphs to include "All Other", which provides perspective on what percentage the top 10 traffic types represents with respect to the entire traffic load.

Enhanced Network Health Alerting
Exinda has expanded its Application Performance Monitoring and Service Level Agreement (SLA) capabilities, allowing for finer-grained monitoring of application performance and alerts for specific TCP and network health issues.

New and Updated Signatures
Exinda's UPM solution has the ability to identify and manage more than 2,000 application signatures. With ExOS 6.1, more than 70 application signatures have been added and/or updated.;

WAN Optimization for the mobile workforce Exinda’s WAN Optimization solutions deliver the three pillars required for true Application Delivery Optimization, which include visibility, control and acceleration, within a single device. This approach has allowed thousands of Exinda’s customers to improve application performance, reduce network operating costs, defer costly bandwidth upgrades and increase productivity by ensuring optimal performance of critical business applications.

Exinda, a global provider of WAN optimization solutions, today announced the availability of the 6060 the latest member of their next generation x60 WAN optimization appliance family. The Exinda 6060 joins the 2060, 4060, and 8060 models announced in November 2009.  The x60 platforms are the first products from the company built on a new, more powerful X-86 based hardware platform.