About This Guide

Preface : About This Guide

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 Portal (Portal)

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 separates alternative, mutually exclusive elements of a choice. The pipe symbol is used in conjunction with braces or brackets; the braces or brackets group the choices and identify them as required or optional: {delete <filename> \| upload <filename>}

Documentation and Release Notes

To obtain the most current version of all Riverbed documentation, go to the Riverbed Support site at https://support.riverbed.com.

If you need more information, see the Riverbed Knowledge Base for any known issues, how-to documents, system requirements, and common error messages. You can browse titles or search for keywords and strings. To access the Riverbed Knowledge Base, log in to the Riverbed Support site at https://support.riverbed.com.

Each software release includes release notes. The release notes identify new features in the software as well as known and fixed problems. To obtain the most current version of the release notes, go to the Software and Documentation section of the Riverbed Support site at https://support.riverbed.com.

Examine the release notes before you begin the installation and configuration process.

Contacting Riverbed

This section describes how to contact departments within Riverbed.

• Technical support - If you have problems installing, using, or replacing Riverbed products, contact Riverbed Support or your channel partner who provides support. To contact Riverbed Support, open a trouble ticket by calling 1-888-RVBD-TAC (1-888-782-3822) in the United States and Canada or
+1 415-247-7381 outside the United States. You can also go to https://support.riverbed.com.

• Professional services - Riverbed has a staff of professionals who can help you with installation, provisioning, network redesign, project management, custom designs, consolidation project design, and custom coded solutions. To contact Riverbed Professional Services, email proserve@riverbed.com or go to http://www.riverbed.com/services-training/Services-Training.html.

• Documentation - The Riverbed Technical Publications team continually strives to improve the quality and usability of Riverbed documentation. Riverbed appreciates any suggestions you might have about its online documentation or printed materials. Send documentation comments to techpubs@riverbed.com.