About This Guide

The SteelCentral Network Performance Management Deployment Guide describes best practices for configuring and deploying the network performance management (NPM) subset of the SteelCentral products, and it includes deployment information about SteelHeads, SteelHead Interceptors, SteelCentral AppResponse, and third-party appliances. The guide includes information about flow collection, packet collection, metrics, analysis, troubleshooting, and licensing.

This guide includes information relevant to the following products:

Riverbed SteelCentral NetProfiler (NetProfiler)

Riverbed SteelCentral NetProfiler (Enterprise NetProfiler)

Riverbed SteelCentral NetProfiler (virtual edition) (NetProfiler-v)

Riverbed SteelCentral NetExpress (NetExpress)

Riverbed SteelCentral NetExpress (virtual edition) (NetExpress-v)

Riverbed SteelCentral Flow Gateway (Flow Gateway)

Riverbed SteelCentral Flow Gateway (virtual edition) (Flow Gateway-v)

Riverbed SteelCentral NetShark (NetShark), including Embedded SteelCentral NetShark, which is NetShark functionality embedded in a Riverbed SteelHead.

Riverbed SteelCentral NetShark (virtual edition) (NetShark-v)

Riverbed SteelCentral Packet Analyzer (Packet Analyzer)

Riverbed SteelHead (SteelHead)

Riverbed SteelHead EX (SteelHead EX)

Riverbed SteelHead Interceptor (Interceptor)

Virtual Services Platform (VSP)

Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse (AppResponse)

Riverbed SteelCentral RPM Dashboards (RPM Dashboards)

Audience

This guide is written for network administrators, operators, and engineers familiar with WANs, LANs, and the data center environment.

You must also be familiar with the user documentation posted on the Riverbed Support site for the products mentioned in About This Guide.

Document Conventions

This guide uses the following standard set of typographical conventions.

Convention	Meaning
italics	Within text, new terms and emphasized words appear in italic typeface.
boldface	Within text, CLI commands, CLI parameters, and REST API properties appear in bold typeface.
Courier	Code examples appear in Courier font: amnesiac > enable amnesiac # configure terminal
< >	Values that you specify appear in angle brackets: interface <ip-address>
[ ]	Optional keywords or variables appear in brackets: ntp peer <ip-address> [version <number>]
{ }	Elements that are part of a required choice appear in braces: {<interface-name> | ascii <string> | hex <string>}
|	The pipe symbol represents a choice to select one keyword or variable to the left or right of the symbol. The keyword or variable can be either optional or required: {delete <filename> | upload <filename>}