Brocade Virtual Traffic Manager (formerly SteelApp)
Load balancing software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
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What is Brocade Virtual Traffic Manager (formerly SteelApp)
Brocade Virtual Traffic Manager (formerly SteelApp) is an application delivery controller (ADC) and load balancing product used to distribute traffic across application servers and improve availability. It is typically deployed by infrastructure and network teams to manage L4/L7 load balancing, SSL/TLS offload, health checks, and traffic management policies for web and API applications. The product is delivered as software/virtual appliance and is commonly used in data center and private cloud environments. The product lineage is associated with the Brocade-branded Virtual Traffic Manager, which later continued under different ownership and naming in the ADC market.
Mature L7 traffic management
The product supports application-layer routing and policy-based traffic management beyond basic L4 distribution. This enables use cases such as content-based routing, header/cookie-based decisions, and controlled failover behavior. These capabilities align with enterprise ADC requirements where fine-grained control is needed for web applications and APIs.
Virtual appliance deployment model
It is designed to run as a virtualized software appliance rather than requiring proprietary hardware. This can simplify deployment in VMware and similar virtualization stacks and supports scaling by adding instances. The model fits organizations standardizing on virtual infrastructure for network services.
Operational features for availability
The product includes health monitoring and traffic steering features intended to keep services available during backend degradation. It typically provides configuration constructs for pools, monitors, and persistence needed for stateful applications. These are common requirements for production load balancing in enterprise environments.
Product ownership and naming changes
The Brocade Virtual Traffic Manager name reflects a historical branding that has changed due to acquisitions and portfolio transitions in the ADC market. This can create confusion when sourcing documentation, downloads, and support channels. Buyers often need to confirm the current product name, owner, and support entitlement for their specific version.
Less cloud-native orientation
Compared with newer proxy and ingress-focused tools, the product is more aligned to traditional ADC patterns and virtual appliance operations. Organizations building Kubernetes-first or service-mesh-centric architectures may find integration and workflows less native. This can increase operational friction if the team expects declarative, GitOps-style configuration and tight container platform integration.
Potential licensing and lifecycle risk
Older ADC products frequently have version-specific licensing, feature tiers, and end-of-life timelines that vary by owner and edition. This can complicate long-term planning, especially for regulated environments that require clear patch and support commitments. Procurement should validate current maintenance terms and roadmap before standardizing.
Plan & Pricing
Pricing model: Contact Ivanti sales (no public prices listed on Ivanti product pages).
Public pricing: Not published on Ivanti website; customers are directed to Contact Sales for quotes.
Licensing & notes (from Ivanti official documentation):
- Licensing is delivered as license keys that enable feature sets and bandwidth limits; keys are normally tied to the product instance or service agreement. (See Ivanti docs on license management.)
- Flexible (capacity-based) licensing via Services Director is supported for some deployments (feature packs + bandwidth allocation model).
- Virtual Traffic Manager runs as a Community Edition when unlicensed (full functionality but bandwidth limit 10 Mb/s and cluster size limit 4).
How to purchase: Contact Ivanti Sales via the Ivanti vADC product page.
