The SCC enables you to manage, configure, and monitor Riverbed products. The SCC also acts as an enterprise management and reporting tool for Riverbed products enabling greater control for global network deployments.

This chapter assumes you have installed and performed the initial configuration of the SCC. For details, including system requirements and cross-product compatibility, see the SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead Installation Guide.

This chapter also assumes that you’re familiar with the various deployment options available to you. For details, see the SteelHead Deployment Guide and the SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead Deployment Guide.

For detailed information about SCC migration best practices, see SCC Best Practices.

SteelHeads must be registered with the SCC so that you can monitor and manage them with the SCC.

SteelHeads are designed to send a registration request periodically to the SCC—either to an IP address or hostname you specify when you run the SteelHead configuration wizard, or to a default SCC hostname. For autoregistration with the default hostname to work, you must configure your DNS server to map to the hostname riverbedcmc and the IP address of the SCC either as a CNAME or as an A record.

During autoregistration, the SteelHeads don’t send passwords to the SCC. Unless the password value has been modified in the Manage Appliances page, the SCC assumes that the default password is password. For details, see Adding appliances.

After a SteelHead is registered, you can set autoconfiguration to automatically push the current configuration when the SteelHead connects.

The model 1000 SCC can manage up to 2500 appliances. The SCC-v configuration must be equivalent, or better, to the model 1000 to support 2500 appliances.

Adhere to these guidelines for deployments with 1500 or more appliances:

Traditionally, appliances communicated with the SCC through an SSH channel. Now, an HTTPS (on TCP port 9443) communication channel is also available. This channel is used to push and pull the new hybrid networking features supported in the SCC (for example, path selection, QoS, and secure transport).

For managed appliances both the SSH and the HTTPS channels must be in a connected state. If either one of these channels is down, then a push from the SCC to the appliance will fail. For instance, if the HTTPS connection is down, pushing the hybrid network configuration from the SCC to appliances will fail.

For detailed information about troubleshooting, see HTTPS communication channel.

The SCC provides you with the ability to configure an SSL authentication port for SteelHeads when the SCC is behind a firewall with restricted access to ports 443 and 80. This feature enables SteelHeads to communicate with SCC. You configure the SSL authentication port using the SCC CLI.

This diagram shows a SteelHead (SH-1) connected to the SCC that’s listening on port 443 without a firewall. The second SteelHead (SH-2) is connected to the SCC through a firewall that has restricted access to ports 443 and 80. On the SCC for SH-2, you can configure an SSL authentication port (for example, 7443) using a CLI command enabling you to communicate with SH-2.

You can configure one additional authentication port in addition to the existing port 443.

The SSL authentication port feature is only available via the CLI; it isn’t available in the SCC Management Console.

For detailed information about connecting and using the Riverbed CLI, see the Riverbed Command-Line Interface Reference Manual.

On the SCC:

On the SteelHead:

To connect to the Management Console, you must know the host, domain, and administrator password that you assigned in the configuration wizard.