Technical Overview of Riverbed's Cascade

I have been getting a lot of questions recently from folks interested in learning more about the technical details of Riverbed's Cascade family of network performance management products.  Hopefully this blog post will answer many of those questions.

Cascade is an enterprise-wide network performance management solution, providing visibility into all your data centers, offices, and mobile users. It uses network flow data, supplemented with packet-based performance metrics, to discover applications, network dependencies, and monitor performance. It uses advanced behavioral analytics to track performance over time and alert you to any deviations from normal behavior. That way you can resolve problems before end-users are impacted.

Below is a look at the Cascade architecture.

 

Cascade consists of the following components:

Cascade Profiler

Provides centralized reporting and analysis of the data collected by other Cascade appliances (i.e., Gateway, Sensor, and Shark) and Steelhead products on a single user interface. It offers performance analytics, security analytics and proactive alerts for delivering application-aware monitoring and troubleshooting for your network. It combines all network data into a single data set with in-depth views that support flexible analysis of the information.

Cascade Gateway

Collects flow data from routers, switches and other network devices. It supports all standard flow types (NetFlow, sFlow, J-Flow, IPFIX, etc.). Cascade Gateway also collects Riverbed’s proprietary CascadeFlow, which is an enhanced version of NetFlow. CascadeFlow is exported by Steelhead appliances, and lets Cascade understand which interface(s) are WAN vs. LAN connected, identifies TCP retransmission counts, and determines the network round trip time for connections being optimized by Steelhead.For processed flow data destined for Cascade Profiler, Cascade Gateway aggregates, compresses, and encrypts the flow data, and then sends it to Cascade Profiler through Riverbed’s multi-purpose network management protocol (MNMP) on port TCP/41017. Cascade Gateway can transmit processed flow data to up to five Cascade Profiler or Cascade Express appliances in addition to sending the flow data it receives in an unprocessed manner to up to five other third-party devices. It can be deployed in the same location as the Profiler or regionally if topography requires.

Cascade Sensor

Passively inspects packets from SPAN ports or taps. It provides Layer 7 application classification and sends performance information, including end user experience metrics, to Cascade Profiler via Riverbed’s multi-purpose network management protocol (MNMP). It is typically deployed in data centers. A virtual edition, Sensor-VE, can be deployed as a Riverbed Services Platform (RSP) package on Steelhead appliances. Sensor-VE provides cost-effective visibility into branch office usage. It provides of many of the same capabilities of the Sensor appliance, with the exception of Layer 7 application classification.

Cascade Shark

Is a high-performance (1 GbE or 10 GbE) continuous packet capture, storage and analysis appliance. It is used for fast indexing and storage of multi-terabyte network traffic recordings so that a record of the traffic is available for retrospective analysis. Cascade Shark also provides micro-flow metrics to Cascade Profiler through MNMP. Micro-flow metrics enable the seamless integration from flow-level data to packet-level dataCascade Pilot seamlessly and securely integrates with remote Cascade Shark appliances to deliver a complete and feature-rich distributed network analysis solution.

Cascade Pilot

Is the only tool on the market to be fully integrated with Wireshark, the world’s most popular open source network protocol analyzer. While Cascade Profiler can provide visibility to all flows across the network, Cascade Pilot provides an in-depth view into problems requiring deep packet analysis. Cascade Pilot uses Riverbed’s unique XML-based protocol on top of an HTTPS connection to communicate with Cascade Shark.