Hi Jaya,
You're right, it's really just managing the Steelhead Mobile software running on the client side machine...
There's no direct SMC/SHA 'integration', with the exception of fixed target rules, if needed. Nothing is needed at the SHA that is specific to the SMC.
The SMC is for reporting/statistics, deployment, license and configuration policy management for the SHMobile client end software. It defines what acceleration rules the client software will use when that software connects to a server side device via an SHA. The optimisation is directly via the SHA, at that point the SMC is not involved.
An analogy would be a gatekeeper or even an IP PBX, the VoIP devices are connecting directly to eachother after the call agent tells them how to reach eachother, and if they're allowed to reach eachother. The device itself get's all it's configuration from the IP PBX / Call Agent.
The main 'integration' requirements are to be sure the client can reach the SMC, to obtain a license to activate the client's local acceleration policy, and to download endpoint and acceleration policy updates and client software upgrades and so on.
SHMobile client needs to get though ports 7800, 7810, 7870 on the local machine's VPN and desktop firewall policies as well as any server side security.
There may also be some ports your need to passthrough for your VPN client or for performance reasons, but that's not anything to do with the SHA, that's done in the accleration policy that the SMC pushes to the SHMobile machine.
The only other integration piece is if your SHmobile traffic is coming in out of path of your SHA; you may need to define fixed target rules in your SMC acceleration policy so your SHMobile will direct traffic to the Primary NIC of the SHA that is local to your remote users entry point, for local server optimisation. So where your remote user is coming in out of path of your SHA, the remote SHMobile and SHA will not see those TCP connections so you must direct your traffic to the SHA to effectively get LAN side optimsiation back through to your WAN (internet) side SHMobile remote user.
SHMobile is effectively an SHA with the SMC being it's management server.. or Controller.
Check out the KB's and Documentation on the support site, if you have a login, to get a much better explanation of how it all hangs together. Or talk to your local Riverbed SE who can best clarify the deployment design and process flow for you.
Cheers.
