Preferred Data Sources

Entities and objects that are streamed to Riverbed IQ can originate from more than one data source; for example, the User Response Time metric can be sent to IQ from AppResponse and NetProfiler for the same entity. The computations of some of these metrics (generally, application location metrics, and, particularly, User Response Time) vary between data source types (AppResponse and NetProfiler), which can complicate incident behavior and management in IQ. When more than one data source type is present, IQ collects the data sent from the preferred data source and ignores the data sent from other data sources. Note that AppResponse is the default preferred data source, and you can change the Edge's configuration to make NetProfiler the preferred data source, if necessary.

Important Considerations

The Preferred Data Source setting applies only to Application-Location metrics that can be sourced either from AppResponse or NetProfiler (Eg: User Response Time and %Total Retrans metrics). This setting does not apply to metrics that are streamed only from Netprofiler (Eg: Inbound/Outbound Network Utilization), these single-source metrics will be streamed regardless of the Data Source Preference.

Note these considerations pertaining to preferred data sources:

  • If both AppResponse and NetProfiler are present, only one is allowed to stream to IQ, never both at the same time.

  • AppResponse is the default preferred data source. When AppResponse is the preferred data source, streaming from NetProfiler is disabled.

  • If you change the preferred data source to be NetProfiler, all streaming from AppResponse will stop.

  • The preferred data source controls the data streamed for triggering incidents, but still allows runbooks to query either data source for information.

  • MOS metrics are streamed only from NetProfiler, and, if AppResponse is preferred, IQ will use throughput metrics for MOS-based detections.

  • AppResponse streams App-Location Throughput and % Failed Connections, neither of which is available when NetProfiler is the preferred data source.

  • In general, changing the preferred data source will result in detections from different metrics, which affects runbook behavior. A warning message describing the effects of the change will be shown; see Changing the Preferred Data Source, below, for the text of that message.

  • If the data source that is streaming is disabled, streaming stops. There is no fallback to the other data source.

Changing the Preferred Data Source

The preferred data source can be changed on the Data Sources page.

When you open an Edge to see its data sources, the Data Ingestion column will indicate the Preferred Data Source. If you wish to change this, click the Change button to open the Change Preferred Data Source dialog, which enables you to specify whether to prefer AppResponse or NetProfiler. This is accompanied by a warning about the effects of actually changing the data source: Changing the preferred data source will reset baselines used for anomaly detection and it will require a few days for the system to train against the data ingested from the new preferred data source. Also, there could be performance implications with a large AppResponse deployment.

Consider talking with Riverbed Support prior to changing the preferred data source.