Overview
  
Overview
Riverbed® SteelCentral™ NetIM is an integrated solution for mapping, monitoring, and troubleshooting your IT infrastructure. With NetIM, you can capture infrastructure topology information, detect performance issues, map application network paths, diagram your network, and troubleshoot infrastructure problems. Additionally, you can manage infrastructure issues within the context of application, network, and end-user experience for a blended view of overall performance.
NetIM version 2.x represents NetIM’s next generation and a major change from previous releases in terms of scalability, software architecture, and deployment. NetIM 2.x is available for installation on VMware ESXI hypervisors, and Azure and Amazon Web Services. For information on supported versions, see the installation guide on the support site.
NetIM 2.x no longer supports installations on Windows platforms. For more information see Migrating to SteelCentral NetIM v2.3.x on the support site.
NetIM provides agentless infrastructure component monitoring to deliver a comprehensive picture of how your infrastructure is affecting network and application performance and how that impacts end-user experience.
NetIM offers a broad overview of how the devices on your network are performing to complement your network and application performance management visibility. NetIM supports the following:
• Real-Time Monitoring – NetIM leverages multiple approaches (for example, synthetic testing, SNMP, CLI) to identify new and changed infrastructure components.
• Analytics – Measure current performance and identify violations.
• Topology and Paths – Visualize and triage issues quickly.
• Troubleshooting – Search-based workflows and on-demand network paths help you to quickly identify and troubleshoot infrastructure performance issues.
• Event and Alert Visibility – Configure alerts based on metric threshold violations, syslogs, and traps and use the Alerts page to view, filter, and drill-down into details.
• Reporting – Report on infrastructure inventory, configuration, and performance metrics.
The following diagram shows the 2.x NetIM architecture, with NetIM deployed on an ESXI hypervisor in a Docker Swarm. For information on Docker Swarms, see the Docker documentation.
The Docker Swarm is transparent to the user and requires no maintenance or administration.
For more information on the benefits of NetIM, including use cases, white papers, and videos, see the Riverbed NetIM product page.
Logging in to the NetIM UI
Once the NetIM server has been installed and configured, you can login to the NetIM UI through a supported web browser. If necessary, contact your site administrator for credentials.
For more information on installing and configuring the NetIM server and the list of supported browsers, see the installation and migration documentation on the support site and Setting Up NetIM.
To log into the NetIM UI, follow these steps.
1. In a supported web browser, enter the URL for the NetIM UI, as follows.
http://<fully-qualified_domain_name OR IP_Address>:8543
Example: http://netim_server.yourcompany.com:8543
2. Enter your login credentials.
NetIM supports multiple authentication servers including:
– Local Authentication
– SAML 2.0-compliant Identity Providers
– TACACS+ integration
Depending on how your NetIM deployment is configured, you may be presented with one or more authentication choices on the NetIM login page. The following screen shows NetIM configured to authenticate with two types of authentication servers.
To login, first select your authentication choice by clicking the SAML, TACACS+, or Local Authentication heading. Your choice will be highlighted in orange. For Local Authentication and TACACS+, enter your credentials and login.
For SAML, select your SAML server by clicking the appropriate button and you will be redirected to your SAML server for login credentials.
For information on user roles and accounts, as well as supported authentication services, see Working With User Accounts and Authentication. For information on configuring SAML, see Configuring SAML Authentication. For information on configuring TACACS+, see Configuring TACACS+ Authentication.
Note the following:
– About Secure Communication
When you install NetIM, you specify the HTTP and HTTPS ports. The default ports are 9190 and 8543 for HTTP and HTTPS, respectively. NetIM is configured to use HTTPS by default.
– About Monitor Resolution
Display resolution for your monitor must be set to 1280x1024 or higher for correct operation of NetIM’s UI. The complete system requirements are available on the Riverbed Support site, support.riverbed.com.
For security reasons, be sure to log out after completing your session. To log out, click Sign Out in the upper-right corner of the screen.
– About Multiple Admin Users
If multiple users are logged into NetIM with the admin role, a visual warning is displayed in the upper right corner of the UI, as shown in the following screen:
Initialization
As NetIM initializes three orange dots appear on the UI display as a progress indicator when the client-side model is initializing, as shown in the following screen:
If you hover over the orange dots a message displays, showing what has been initialized and what remains to be initialized.
Introduction to the NetIM Home Page
The Home page provides a high-level summary of the health of your network. The following figure shows an example of the NetIM screen for an administrative user. From this page, you can start any workflow, including
• Drilling down to more information about the health and status of devices in your network
• Launching a number of other options, such as the Topology Viewer, from the menu bar
• Changing the time window of data displayed on this page
For information on adding and configuring panels on the Home page, see Working With Custom Views.
To drill down for detailed status you can click on a slice of the circle graph or a square status indicator or an area in the Geographic panel. You can also click on a circular status indicator to remove it from the circle graph.
Additionally, you can get mouse-over status on the Geographic panel and graphs, as shown in the following screen:
Also, you can click the Launch Alerts Manager link in the right corner of the Active Alerts frame to bring up the Alerts Manager page, as shown in the following screen:
For more information about working with the Home page, see Monitoring the Health and Status of Your Infrastructure.
Additional Pages of Interest
In addition to the Home page, the following pages are also available to monitor network data:
• Topology Viewer
The Topology Viewer lets you see a live diagram of your network, and offers filtering, drill-down to more information, and print capabilities. Choose TOPOLOGY from the menu bar to open the Topology Viewer. For more information, see Navigating Topology.
• AppNetwork Path Analysis
AppNetwork Path Analysis lets you determine the route being taken between a source and destination, with the option to also see the reverse path. For more information, see Using AppNetwork Path Analysis.
• Metric Page
The Metrics Page lets you visualize selected metrics on devices and interfaces on which polling is enabled. For more information, see Using the Metrics Page.
• Alerts Manager
The Alerts Manager gives you a way to see the “big picture” of the events, alerts, syslog entries, and traps that occur in your infrastructure and to focus on specific events of interest. For more information, see Viewing Alerts.
Printing Pages
You can quickly print most of pages using the quick print button in the upper right corner of each page, as shown in the following screen:
Additional Options Available to Administrative Users
You must have administrator privileges to use the following screens.
• Device Manager
The Device Manager, CONFIGURE->Device Manager, provides an administrative view for the following:
– Device entries (which contain device and vendor information and credentials needed to connect to a device)
– Polling profile and alert(s) assigned to each device
– Connection statistics for recent connection attempts by NetIM to collect device data using SNMP
For more information, see Controlling Direct Collection.
• System Event Dashboard
The System Event Dashboard provides an immediate view of current events from the network and NetIM. To access the System Event Dashboard, navigate to CONFIGURE->All Settings->Administer->System Event Dashboard.
For more information, see Using the System Event Dashboard.
• Poller and Collection Status
The Poller and Collection Status screens show the poller results, as well as collection progress. To access the Poller and Collection Status screens, navigate to CONFIGURE > Administer->Poller|Collection Status.
For more information, see Monitoring Polling and Collection Status.
• Settings
The Settings page provides control over NetIM system properties and configuration and is the interface used to configure the product. To access the Settings page, navigate to CONFIGURE->All Settings.
For more information, see Working with General NetIM Settings.
• Core Server Management
The Core Server Management page provides access to server status, debug settings, the ability to start/stop server processes, view memory and event information, and manage clients. To access the Core Server Management page, navigate to CONFIGURE->All Settings->Administer->Core Server Management.
For more information, see NetIM Status and Core Server Management.
Menu Options
The menu options, which persist across the top of the UI, provide access to NetIM options, as shown in the following image map:
The following table explains the menu options.
 
Menu
Options
HOME
SEARCH
Displays the Search page. For more informations, see Using Search.
TOPOLOGY
Displays the Topology Viewer. For more information, see Navigating Topology.
METRICS
Displays the Metric Navigator. For more information, see Using the Metrics Page.
ALERTS
Displays the redesigned Alerts Manager. For more information, see Viewing Alerts.
The legacy Alerts Manager is still available at CONFGIURE->All Settings->Alerts. For more information, see Viewing Alerts (Legacy Alerts Manager)
MORE
• Synthetic Tests - Opens the Synthetic Testing page. For more information, see Running and Viewing Synthetic Tests.
• Reports - Opens the Reports viewer. For more information, see Creating and Viewing Reports.
• Generated Reports - Opens list of generated reports. For more information, see Creating and Viewing Reports.
• Path Monitoring - Opens Path Monitoring page. Path Monitoring
• Custom Views - Opens Custom Views page. For more information, see Working with the Custom Views Page.
• Navigator - Opens Navigator page. For more information, see Navigating Topology.
• IP SLA - Opens IP SLA page. For more information, see IP SLA Views.
CONFIGURE
 
• Basic Setup. For more information, see Setting Up NetIM
• Add/Discover Devices. For more information, see Add/Discover Devices Wizard.
• Polling. For more information, see Configuring Metric Polling.
• Device Manager. For more informations, see Controlling Direct Collection.
• Poller Status. For more information, see Monitoring Polling and Collection Status.
• Collection Status. For more information, see Monitoring Polling and Collection Status.
• All Settings - Displays the Settings page with the complete list of utilities available for your role.
Settings Page
Discover
– Add/Discover Devices. For more information, see Add/Discover Devices Wizard
– Basic Setup. For more information, see Setting Up NetIM
– Device Manager. For more informations, see Controlling Direct Collection
– Global Discovery Settings. For more information, see Managing Global Credentials and Other Global Discovery Settings
– IP Detection. For more information, see Managing Global Credentials and Other Global Discovery Settings.
Monitor
– Path Monitoring. For more information, see Using AppNetwork Path Analysis.
– Polling. For more information, see Configuring Metric Polling.
– Polling Overrides. For more information, see Polling Overrides.
– Rollup. For more information, see Configuring Metrics Roll-Up.
– Synthetic Testing. For more information, see Configuring Synthetic Test Profiles.
– User Defined Metrics. For more information, see Configuring User-Defined Metrics.
Alert
– Alert Profiles. For more information, see Monitored Path Alerting
– Alert Manager (Legacy). For more information, see Viewing Alerts (Legacy Alerts Manager).
– Business Hours. For more information, see To record your selection, click the Submit button.
– Default Thresholds. For more information, see Working with Default Thresholds
– Maintenance Windows. For more information, see Configuring a Maintenance Window
– Notifications. For more information, see Configuring Alert Notifications
– Notification Templates. Allows advanced power users to view default and create/edit new Notification Templates that can be assigned when creating alert notifications. This is not a recommended task to perform without assistance. For more information, “Contact Technical Support“.
The NetIM notification templates utilizes the ThymeLeaf template framework (https://www.thymeleaf.org/) and is a very advanced feature NetIM provides many out-of-the-box sample templates for you to clone and tweak/edit. The system-defined templates should cover most of your needs or require only minimal editing to support your use-cases. Your most common use-case might be to select another system-defined template as the default template for a notification type and object type. To support your template creation and editing, the Notification Templates page contains contextual help on the objects and attributes that can be used in your template.
Settings Page
 
Organize
– Custom Attributes. For more information, see Custom Attributes.
– Element Naming. For more information, see Overriding Element Names.
– Grouping Rules. For more information, see Configuring Groups.
– Search Expressions. For more information, see Using the Search Expressions Page.
– Site Gateways. For more information, see Suppressing Alert Notifications.
– Custom Views. For more information, see Working with the Custom Views Page.
 
Customize
– Bulk Import. For more information, see Using Bulk Import.
– Custom Scripts. For more information, see Working with Custom Scripts.
– Device Drivers. For more information, see Configuring Device Drivers.
– External Links. For more information, see Launching to Custom External Links.
– General Settings. For more information, see Working with General NetIM Settings.
– Interface Speed Overrides. For more information, see Working With Interface Speed Overrides.
– IP Forwarding Table Collection. For more information, see IP Forwarding Table Collection.
– Report Export Configurations. For more information, see Scheduling Reports for Export.
– Scheduled Jobs. For more information, see Working with Scheduled Jobs.
– Topology Views. For more information, see Saving and Managing Topology Views.
Integrate
– Identity Providers. For more information, see Configuring SAML Authentication.
– SteelCentral™ NetProfiler. For more information, see NetProfiler Integration.
– SNMP Trap Receiver. For more information, see Configuring the SNMP Trap Receiver.
– TACACS+. For more information, see Configuring TACACS+ Authentication.
– Viptela vManage NMS. This functionality is disabled by default. To enable Viptela vManage NMS, Contact Technical Support.
Settings Page
Administer
– Collection Status. For more information, see The Collection Status Page.
– Licensing. For more information, see Licensing Problems.
– Login Scripts. For more information, see Working with Device Login Scripts
– Login Settings. For more information, see Adding a Message to the Login Screen.
– Poller Status. For more information, see The Poller Status Page
– Core Server Management. For more information, see NetIM Status and Core Server Management
– NetIM Infrastructure. For more information, see NetIM Infrastructure Page.
– Synthetic Test Sources. For more information, see Running and Viewing Synthetic Tests.
– System Event Dashboard. For more information, see Using the System Event Dashboard.
– User Management. For more information, see Working With User Accounts and Authentication.
HELP
• System Status - Displays the System Status page. For more information, see Checking System Status
• User Guide - Displays the product documentation.
• API Documentation - Displays landing page for all API documentation. For more information, see Supported APIs.
• Legal Notices - Displays the copyright notices, patent numbers, and third-party software copyright notices for this product.
• About - Displays software version information.