Layer 47 - Riverbed Cascade - Advanced network and application performance analysis and reporting

A new way of managing and optimising application performance and security by analysing the interactions of users with the applications, systems, and network devices that comprise the application delivery infrastructure.

Server virtualization, data center consolidation, and Web services initiatives are changing the IT landscape. Organizations are increasingly finding significant gaps in their ability to secure and manage the availability and performance of key business services.

Riverbed Cascade™ combines visibility into end-to-end application delivery dependencies with Network behaviour Analysis (NBA) to address these management gaps. Riverbed's network and application analysis and reporting solution spans WAN and telecommunications, network engineering, application monitoring, and data center operations groups to provide enterprise-wide application performance analysis, data on server and application dependencies, and the tools for IT managers to immediately determine their bottlenecks for the delivery of applications across their infrastructure.

How it is Used

Cascade provides users the ability to effectively manage change in their IT infrastructures. As a result, customers are able to ensure the availability, performance, and security of business services as well as to reduce costs and satisfy regulatory requirements. Specifically, customers use Cascade for:

Application Performance Management
behavioural analytics combined with user-defined policies deliver the information and enforce the policies needed to proactively assure service delivery. Contextual alerts provide the information needed to quickly resolve issues. Click Here for More

Improved Security
Extensive analytics identify hard to- detect security threats such as zero-day attacks, “boutique” malware, and credentialed attacks.

Visibility into WAN and virtualized environments
Get full visibility into traditionally “blind” environments such as optimized WANs and virtualized systems. Click Here for More

Automated regulatory compliance
Visibility and reporting capabilities support automated planning and policy enforcement and reduce the effort and cost required to support audits.

Data center consolidations and moves
Application dependency mapping provides the information needed for proper planning. Change impact information ensures smooth implementation. Click Here for More

CMDB Discovery
Discovery and dependency mapping that is pervasive, continuous, and passive for coverage that is accurate, cost-effective, and enterprise-wide.

How Riverbed Cascade Works

Riverbed Cascade provides a new way of managing application performance by analysing the interactions of users, applications, systems, and network interfaces that comprise the application delivery infrastructure. Unlike other visibility and monitoring products, that only offer WAN interface specific views, Riverbed Cascade takes vast amounts of application data from across the enterprise and turns it into actionable, relevant information. Cascade creates application-centric, site-centric, and business-centric views that help managers address critical challenges, such as WAN optimization justification, automated availability and performance analysis and reducing the cost and risks associated with server and data center consolidation initiatives.

Cascade collects network flow data already existent in devices such as switches, routers and WAN optimization devices; it then enhances it with layer 7 application and user identification, and network performance metrics to provide visibility into how applications typically flow across an organization’s infrastructure. Cascade then applies behavioural analysis technology to determine user/application/server dependencies and detect meaningful changes in behaviour that signal performance or security issues.

Automated customizable behavioural analytics enable users to identify performance and availability issues before they disrupt business services – all without having to maintain complex and time-consuming static thresholds.

Complete and accurate information with relevant context improves operational workflow and management decision making.	User/System Interface
	Query engine	Dashboards	Management Reports
	User-Defined policies	Management system API	Mitigation Actions
Pre-defined and customisable behavioural analytics enable users to identify performance, availability, and security issues before they disrupt business services.	behavioural Model User / Application / Network / Servers
	Activity Baselines	behavioural Analytics	Dependency Mapping
Cascade collects network flow data and enhances it with application and user identification.	Discovery
	Layer 7 Application Fingerprints	Application Response Times	User Identity & Switch Port
	Network Flow Data

Complete and accurate usage and dependency data provide the key inputs for making the right optimization and change management decisions. Cascade also provides an extensive set of integrations, which enable it to interoperate intelligently with other systems to increase their value and improve your workflow. Cascade’s passive, agent-less deployment allows fast implementation.

Cascade Implementation

Unlike solutions which require deep packet inspection on every WAN link, Cascade's passive, agent-less deployment allows fast and cost-effective implementation and quick time to value. Cascade Gateways collects network flow data already existing in an organization’s network provides intelligent de-duplication retaining information on where each flow was recorded, and sends this condensed data to the Cascade Profiler. Profiler complements this information with layer 7 application and response time data retrieved from a Cascade Sensor deployed in the datacenter.

These records are then further enhanced with user identification information provided by active directories,switch port information, QoS, and SNMP data. The result is a complete view of a business application flow from the back end server to the users desktop. Cascade also provides an extensive set of integrations, with management systems typically deployed in an IT environment to further streamline workflows and provide value across multiple operations teams.

How It Works Deployment

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