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.

Rather than merging conflicting data, Riverbed IQ uses a Preferred Data Source setting to select which system defines the Application-Location space. This selection ensures consistent handling of key metrics by streaming data from only one source at a time.

Note: AppResponse is the default preferred data source, and you can change the Edge's configuration to make NetProfiler the preferred data source.
Alert: Changing the preferred data source will reset baselines used for anomaly detection and it will require several 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.

Important Considerations

The Preferred Data Source setting applies only to Entity type Application-Location metrics that can be sourced either from AppResponse or NetProfiler (e.g., User Response Time and %Total Retrans metrics). This setting does not apply to metrics that are streamed for other Entity types from Netprofiler (e.g., Inbound/Outbound Network Utilization), these non-Application-Location 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 can stream Application-Location entity metrics to IQ, never both at the same time. This is an entity-level switch, not a general exclusion of overlapping metrics.

  • AppResponse is the default preferred data source. When AppResponse is the preferred data source, streaming of Entity type Application-Location metrics NetProfiler is disabled. In particular, the following metrics are only available in either NetProfiler or AppResponse:

    • You can only stream Application-Location MOS metrics through NetProfiler.

    • You can only stream Application-Location Throughput, % Retrans Packets, and % Failed Connections metrics through AppResponse.

      • Note: In all instances, all metrics/propoerties can be queried at any time (i.e. the Preferred Data Source configuration does not affect Data Query capabilities).

    • If you change the preferred data source to be NetProfiler, all streaming of Entity type Application-Location metrics from AppResponse will stop.

  • The preferred data source controls the Entity type Application-Location data streamed for triggering incidents, but still allows runbooks to query either data source for all other information.

  • 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 configured Preferred Data Source that is streaming becomes disabled, then streaming of Entity Application-Location metrics ceases. There is no fallback to the other data source.

Changing the Preferred Data Source

You can change the preferred data source 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 changing the data source.

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