Revit Server v. Riverbed Steelhead device

[BrenDillon-IHA]

We're beginning a large collaboration with another office and are considering two options for collaborative work within the Revit models. The company we're working with would like to use a Riverbed Steelhead Device, but is open to other options. We haven't worked with Revit Server before, but to us it seems that making optimal use of the resources built into Revit would make the most sense.
Does anyone have experience working with both of these options and can offer a compare/contrast on advantages and disadvantages?

[Steve_Stafford]

They are not mutually exclusive or replacement strategies for one another. They compliment each other and most likely will benefit from using them both. Less expensive to try Revit Server without Riverbed first but most likely you'd see the greatest enhancement with both in place.

[BMcCallum]

We use both. We had the Riverbed devices first and found huge gains when we added Revit Servers in each studio.

[robert.manna]

Yep yep to Steve & Bruce.

Riverbed is WAN optimization technology (though they like to sell it as "acceleration" technology). While it may allow one or two people to collaborate on a Central File not located on a server in their office, there is a good chance you'll run into errors, crashes and data corruption beyond that. Distance between the sites (latency) and the size of your pipe (bandwidth) all play a roll in how much you can push it. Revit Server manages the latency issue for you and is quite happy to run on top of Steelheads, in fact you will likely see some really good data compression gains running Revit Server on top of the steelheads.

[Bimmer]

Yep yep to Steve & Bruce.

Riverbed is WAN optimization technology (though they like to sell it as "acceleration" technology). While it may allow one or two people to collaborate on a Central File not located on a server in their office, there is a good chance you'll run into errors, crashes and data corruption beyond that. Distance between the sites (latency) and the size of your pipe (bandwidth) all play a roll in how much you can push it. Revit Server manages the latency issue for you and is quite happy to run on top of Steelheads, in fact you will likely see some really good data compression gains running Revit Server on top of the steelheads.

What type of file size and bandwidth is required for a "good" Revit server connection? I have a 500+ MB file I would like to use, but I Revit Server, when I tested in version 2011, was flaky at best. It lost connection to the Revit Server and prompted the user that it lost connection to the central file among other lags when opening the file with large links. Good luck with CAD links on Revit servers. We had an 8 Mb (megabit) WAN connection. Personally, I do not think Revit Server is practical for large projects with consultants file sizes of 400+MB linked in to work across offices. But if someone has gotten it to work, please chime in and give us details of your setup. Getting Autodesk to make WAN software is like getting Dell computers to build cars.

[robert.manna]

Maximum total latency between sites is 200ms. That is each leg should not exceed 100ms, it would be preferable to half that, and have each leg be at least int he neighborhood of 50ms. Consistency is important too, if there are massive spikes on the network that fill your bandwidth, latency will increase and greatly affect performance of Revit Server. Size of pipe is important, but not as important as overall Quality Of Service (QOS). So if you bought yourself a really big pipe, but it has ****** QOS then you're kinda shooting yourself in the foot. On the other hand if you have a big pipe and low latency, then likely there is some other culprit, such as network configuration, firewalls, etc. getting in the way.

[robert.manna]

Getting Autodesk to make WAN software is like getting Dell computers to build cars.

Say what you want, but the reality is with '12 we're on an effective version 1.5 of a software that is "new", Yes the concepts have been around for quite some time, but having been part of a firm that was a customer of a "Data caching solution" that was not proprietary in terms of the files it was supposed to cache, I'll take a file type specific solution any day of the week, particularly when dealing with complex databases and permissions management which is what we've got in Revit.

Also, workstations can make just as much a difference in terms of performance of large files, we you were having all these problems prior to attempting to implement Revit Server. Have you tried taking the files out of RS to see how they perform/behave when on a standard file server?

[Bimmer]

Say what you want, but the reality is with '12 we're on an effective version 1.5 of a software that is "new", Yes the concepts have been around for quite some time, but having been part of a firm that was a customer of a "Data caching solution" that was not proprietary in terms of the files it was supposed to cache, I'll take a file type specific solution any day of the week, particularly when dealing with complex databases and permissions management which is what we've got in Revit.

Also, workstations can make just as much a difference in terms of performance of large files, we you were having all these problems prior to attempting to implement Revit Server. Have you tried taking the files out of RS to see how they perform/behave when on a standard file server?

No doubt, the central file outside of Revit Server is unusable in a WAN setting. But regarding linked files in a WAN vs. Revit Server location (not actually converted to revit server central files), the opening of the linked files where the same from the local server location. Reload latest took the same about of time.I have not tried to convert the linked files to a Revit Server central file, and I would be interested to know what gains could be had. But even so, it would not be practical for me to do the conversion of 500+ MB of consultants (MEP and structural) file every two weeks.

I agree with you on having good QOS and reduced latency. I will make a note of the latency when I test Revit Server 2012 with our cloud vendor. Thanks for the information.

[robert.manna]

No doubt, the central file outside of Revit Server is unusable in a WAN setting. But regarding linked files in a WAN vs. Revit Server location (not actually converted to revit server central files), the opening of the linked files where the same from the local server location. Reload latest took the same about of time.I have not tried to convert the linked files to a Revit Server central file, and I would be interested to know what gains could be had. But even so, it would not be practical for me to do the conversion of 500+ MB of consultants (MEP and structural) file every two weeks.

I agree with you on having good QOS and reduced latency. I will make a note of the latency when I test Revit Server 2012 with our cloud vendor. Thanks for the information.

I feel like some words are missing here, as I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in the middle. Regardless, in terms of the Central files and the WAN, my point was not that you should try to use the Central Files over the WAN, my point was that you should try testing/assessing the Central Files on a LAN when saved to a file server, to determine if the crashing is in fact the result of Revit Server or if there is some other problem with the file(s).

Consider this.... Revit consolidates the work that used to be done in many different CAD files into one file, so if you had someone who created "dirty" CAD it had little impact on everyone else. Now with Revit if you have someone doing some dirty modeling, it quickly affects everyone else. Now along comes Revit Server, which allows further consolidation of team members work from multiple offices, on top of making realtime linking between different models in different places a possibility. Further consolidation is only likely to expose and put you at more risk of people's mistakes then before, and you've increased the number of people who can make a mistake and cause a problem for the whole team.

[meng005]

Autodesk has a whitepaper on Revit Server and the Steelhead device: http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/@api/de..._Steelhead.pdf

Our network manager has indicated a 20-30% optimization of port 808 traffic through the Steelhead devices.