NetProfiler and RPM Dashboard Integration

The RPM Dashboards provide a single place to take data from multiple application performance management and network performance management data sources and present that view on a single screen. The NetProfiler is one of a variety of data sources for the RPM Dashboards (other sources include but are not limited to SteelCentral AppInternals and AppResponse). The data from NetProfiler is presented in conjunction with data from other sources. Intelligent drill-down menus enable easy access to underlying and more detailed data available from different sources. Because the RPM Dashboards use built-in intelligence to ensure the correct data source is associated with the correct data, you can easily pivot from data from one source (such as the NetProfiler) to a view from a different source (such as AppResponse).

The following caveats apply when using the NetProfiler as a data source for dashboards (these caveats include limits on what information is presented and performance related issues):

Currently, you cannot display all data available in the NetProfiler in a RPM Dashboard view. For example, Service Maps, NetProfiler, the RPM Dashboard widgets, WAN Optimization Reports, and user information is not available directly on the RPM Dashboards. However, this information is available after you have pivoted from the RPM Dashboards to a report directly in the NetProfiler.

Riverbed recommends that as a best practice, you keep the data refresh rates to the lowest value possible to enable the RPM Dashboards integration to have the least impact on the NetProfiler performance. The RPM Dashboards uses REST API calls to access information about the NetProfiler. Because the information is retrieved in the same manner as any other report that has a significant number of information with rapid refresh rates, this can have an impact on the NetProfiler overall performance.

The closer the RPM Dashboard server is physically located to the NetProfiler, the less impact network latency has on the overall performance of the integration. Having significant latency between the SteelCentral Portal server and NetProfiler can introduce performance issues or prevent proper and expedient updating of the RPM Dashboard pages.

You can configure all or one of your NetProfilers as data sources for the SteelCentral Portal. There is no support for configuring the same NetProfiler multiple times as this has an adverse impact on the performance of the NetProfiler.

To minimize the chances of performance issues and maximize the available functionality between the NetProfiler and the RPM Dashboards , Riverbed recommends that you use the most recent versions available. However, you must run at least NetProfiler v10.6.1 or later and the RPM Dashboards v2.3p11.