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Network Monitoring and Troubleshooting for Dummies - Compliments of Riverbed

Network Monitoring and Troubleshooting for Dummies

Networks are complex. Your network performance management shouldn’t be!

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Cascade Sensor

Packet Inspection and Layer 7 Application Visibility

"Shifting to an automated system was a significant risk. Visibility into the infrastructure minimizes that risk, and Cascade was the only solution that gave us the insight and the confidence to make such a serious transformation."
—Christophe Duprat, IT director, International Herald Tribune

Cascade Sensor provides end-to-end layer 7 application response time metrics to Cascade Profiler for analysis and reporting. A virtual edition, Cascade Sensor-VE, can be deployed on Steelhead appliances via a Riverbed Services Platform (RSP) to monitor performance at remote locations.

Understanding application response times between infrastructure components is critical to managing end-user experience. Cascade Sensor provides end-to-end application response time monitoring – without desktop or server agents. Responsiveness metrics are not only critical to identifying and resolving performance issues faster, they also help validate and assure the performance of applications delivered over the network.

Cascade Sensor is a network probe that passively monitors packets traversing the network, performing deep packet inspection in order to provide Cascade Profiler with a variety of performance metrics, including Layer 7 application identification, response times and latency, retransmissions, and TCP health.

Cascade Sensor-VE is a virtual remote sensor that runs on the Riverbed Services Platform (RSP), a virtualized partition on the Steelhead appliance that is deployed at the branch.. It takes advantage of the established Steelhead appliance footprint to enable enhanced performance measurement in both optimized and non-optimized WAN environments, as well as local branch LAN traffic.

Deployment with the RSP means that Sensor-VE is optimally located for measuring the end-user experience, providing an easy-to-manage and cost-effective solution that eliminates the need for additional hardware at the branch. Cascade Sensor-VE is an optional, software-only component that enhances Cascade’s flow-based analytics.

Cascade Sensor and Cascade Sensor-VE
  • Accelerate application problem identification and resolution, reducing the impact that application slowdowns have on end-user productivity
  • Proactively identify and resolve performance issues before users are impacted
  • Make better informed decisions about the applications that drive the business
  • Assure users have consistent and reliable access to the applications they need to meet business objectives
  • Companies that currently have Steelhead appliances deployed can take advantage of their current Riverbed investment and utilize the Steelhead appliances as probes across the network.  The result is reduced capex expense while increasing their reach of what they are able to monitor and troubleshoot on their network.
Using mirror ports or SPAN on switches or passive taps, Cascade Sensor provides Cascade Profiler with statistics for the following network traffic characteristics:
  • Connections between hosts on the monitored segments of the network
  • Source and destination IP addresses and port numbers used in the connections
  • Ports and applications being accessed on hosts
  • Protocols
  • Traffic volumes in connections, bytes, or bits per second
  • Packet arrival times
Cascade Profiler uses these statistics to determine:
  • Latency and  response time analysis broken out by network, client and server delay for granular understanding of application behavior and user experience
  • TCP retransmissions and errors, which also provide an indication of end user experience
  • Application throughput – the rate at which application data is traversing the network, not including network overhead and retransmits – which helps assess the overall performance of the application and determine the need for additional optimization.
  • User connection throughput, a per-connection throughput measurement, measured only while the connection is actively transmitting
  • Connection duration examines the performance of transaction-oriented applications, where a connection contains a limited number of application transactions
  • Proactive alerting in conjunction with Cascade Analytics
Additionally, Cascade Sensor supports:
  • 1GB and 10GB interfaces
  • SR and LR configurations
  • Copper and fiber port types
  • Reporting to up to 5 Cascade Profilers
  • Compression and encryption of traffic to Cascade Profiler for security and efficiency
  • Direct packet analysis through the Sensor user interface

Cascade Sensor

Model CAS-2260 Series
Monitor Port Type Built-in Copper 10G Fiber LR 10G Fiber SR
Monitor Port Speed / Connector 10/100/1000 RJ45 Built In 10GB/LC, Single mode Fiber 10GB/LC, Multimode Fiber
No. Monitoring Ports 4 2 2
Reporting Capacity Unit can report to up to two Cascade Profilers
Disk Capacity 2 TB
RAID RAID 1
Front Swappable Disks 2
RAM 8 GB
Serial Port (9-pin D-subminiature) √
Primary Cascade Management Port √

 

Cascade Sensor-VE

 ModelCAS-VE
Steelhead SH250 (L/M/H) SH520 (L/M/H)
SH550 (L/M/H)		 SH1050 (L/M/H)
SH1020 (L/M/H)
SH1520 (L/M/H)
SH2020 (L/M/H)
SH2050 (L/M/H)
Memory Required 256MB 512MB 512MB
Reporting Capacity Unit can report to one Cascade Profiler
Disk Space Required 12GB
SPAN monitoring of Branch LAN traffic √
Monitor SH LAN/WAN traffic √

Cascade Sensor 1

 

Service health by location dashboard shows user experience, efficiency and connectivity for each location. User experience, efficiency and connectivity metrics are provided by Cascade Sensor.

Cascade Sensor 2

Response time events trigger when response time deviate significantly from normal, historical values.

Cascade Sensor 3

 

Cascade Sensor also provides information on TCP retransmissions. In this alert TCP retransmissions spiked above typical ranges, triggering an alert and providing proactive notification of a potential issue.

Cascade Sensor 4

 

Cascade Profiler shows the top candidates for WAN optimization, by volume and round trip time.

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Riverbed. WAN optimization for your network: Application acceleration, WAN bandwidth optimization, and IT consolidation
Riverbed Technology delivers performance for the globally connected enterprise. With Riverbed, enterprises can successfully and intelligently implement strategic initiatives such as virtualization, consolidation, cloud computing, and disaster recovery without fear of compromising performance. By giving enterprises the platform they need to understand, optimize and consolidate their IT, Riverbed helps enterprises to build a fast, fluid and dynamic IT architecture that aligns the business needs of the organization. Additional information about Riverbed (NASDAQ: RVBD) is available at www.riverbed.com.