Riverbed labels Granite as an edge virtual server infrastructure doing to edge servers outside the data centre what virtual desktop infrastructure did for desktops, i.e., it allows IT to manage all edge server applications and data to be managed in the datacentre.
 
Granite centralises branch data in the datacentre while delivering local performance to branch users.  Riverbed claims businesses using Granite can restore operations in a matter of minutes versus days, centrally protect and secure data, and significantly lower the TCO of branch and remote offices. 
 
First introduced in early 2012, the latest iteration of the service – Riverbed Granite 2.6 supports more branches, bigger data sets, and additional enterprise-class storage solutions, including IBM Storwize V7000. 

New snapshot integration capabilities in Riverbed Granite 2.6 provide application-consistent data protection with a greater number of datacentre storage arrays. A snapshot records the state of a storage device at a particular point in time, accelerating recovery for branch servers and data and minimizing the impact of outages or data failures.

IBM Storwize® V7000 Snapshot Support – Integrated support for IBM Storwize V7000 arrays enables configuration and coordination of branch data snapshots in the data center. IBM customers now get seamless end-to-end data protection for applications running in branch offices and can use existing datacenter backup solutions like IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and Symantec NetBackup.

Snapshot Handoff Framework – The snapshot handoff framework introduces a script-execution interface used to orchestrate snapshot operations for storage arrays for which Granite-integrated snapshot control is not currently available.

The new Virtual Granite Core 1500 (VGC-1500) series delivers greater capacity for Virtual Granite Core deployments, scaling to support more branches and larger datasets. The VGC-1500 series, enabled with Granite 2.6 software, includes two new model licenses: VGC-1500-L (20TB) and VGC-1500-M (35TB).

Watch this video to know more about Riverbed Granite.