Flow-Gateway-Ve-10-20-Install Guide
Flow-Gateway-Ve-10-20-Install Guide
Version 10.20
August 2021
© 2021 Riverbed Technology, Inc. All rights reserved.
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www.riverbed.com 712-00133-14
1 - Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................4
Additional Resources ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Contacting Riverbed ...................................................................................................................................... 5
The virtual edition of the SteelCentral™ Flow Gateway is a virtualized implementation of the Flow
Gateway appliance. This document describes how to install the virtual edition on a VMware ESXi host.
Additional Resources
The primary source of product information is the online help system. Additional information is available
from the Riverbed Support site at https://support.riverbed.com. This includes:
• Release Notes - posted on the Software page for your product. Choose your product from the
Software menu.
• Users Guides - posted on the Documentation page for your product. Choose your product from
the Documentation menu.
• Tech Notes - linked to from the Documentation page for your product. Choose your product from
the Documentation menu.
• Knowledge Base - a database of known issues and how-to documents. You can browse titles or
search for key words and strings. Choose “Search the Knowledge Base” from the Knowledge Base
menu.
Contacting Riverbed
Options for contacting Riverbed include:
When you purchase the Flow Gateway, you receive an email with a license activation token. Verify that
you have this token before you deploy the product.
You must also verify that the required hardware and software are available, and that network ports are
open to allow the Flow Gateway to receive information from other SteelCentral products and to access
required network services.
Data sources
Flow Gateway receives traffic information from NetFlow, IPFIX, sFlow. NetShark, and AppResponse 11,
or compatible Packeteer FDR sources. It also receives SteelFlow Net information from SteelHead
(formerly called CascadeFlow). This includes application identification, QoS configuration and flow data.
SteelFlow Net is a standards-compliant variant of NetFlow v9 that uses a custom Riverbed template to
send standard NetFlow data as well as more specialized metrics.
For Flow Gateway to receive flow data from NetFlow-enabled devices, enable the SNMP ifIndex
persistence feature of the NetFlow source to ensure consistency of interface reporting.
Additionally, Riverbed SteelCentral Agent and Amazon Web Services Virtual Private Cloud networks can
be configured to send cloud flow data to Flow Gateway.
• Set up the available data sources and point them to the IP address of the Flow Gateway before you
install it.
• Install the Flow Gateway up to the point of verification, then go install or configure the data sources,
and then return to the Flow Gateway to complete the installation verification.
It is preferable to configure all the data sources that are available at the time you install the Flow
Gateway. However, Flow Gateway operation can be confirmed with just one data source.
Network access
The Flow Gateway uses the management network to communicate with other SteelCentral products
and to access network services. Some basic requirements are listed in the sections that follow, for
detailed information on which ports and protocols must be open, refer to the SteelCentral Network
Performance Management Deployment Guide.
You can find the license key on your licensing page on the Riverbed Support page. Once you know your
license key, use the table below to determine which licensing generation your license belongs to and
the product code for that license.
If your license key looks like this Your license is of this generation Your product code is
Configuration information
When you configure the Flow Gateway, you will be prompted to provide configuration information. The
available configuration settings are listed in the table below. Information that is required to complete the
installation is listed in the table that follows with an asterisk (*). Items not marked with an asterisk are
optional during installation and can be specified afterwards on the Flow Gateway Configuration >
General Settings page if necessary.
It may be useful to write the configuration values in the blank column of the checklist below so that you
can refer to them during the configuration step or afterward.
Netmask:*
Default gateway:*
Time Zone:
SNMP information:
The Flow Gateway is set by default to use SNMP
Version 1 and to allow MIB browsing. If you are
configuring SNMP at this time, obtain the necessary V1
or V3 information.
• “Deploy Flow Gateway on an ESXi host using the Web client” on page 12
• “Deploy Flow Gateway on vSphere using the Web Client” on page 12
• “Add Virtual Hard Disk for Flow Data Buffering” on page 13
• “Licensing considerations” on page 14
• “Retrieve the Virtual Machine UUID” on page 14
2. Select the ESXi host you want to install the Flow Gateway on, right-click it, and select Create/Register
VM.
3. Select Deploy a virtual machine from an OVF or an OVA file, and then click Next.
4. Specify a name for the Flow Gateway virtual machine, and browse to the location of the OVA file.
Click Next.
5. Select the datastore that will hold the Flow Gateway files. Click Next.
6. On the Network Mapping page, map the source networks (ports) of the Flow Gateway to destination
networks (port groups) on the server, then click Next.
7. On the Disk Format page, select the disk provisioning format and then click Next.
We recommended that you choose “Thick Provision” when you select the disk format, to make sure
sufficient disk space is available to the virtual machine. You can select “Thin Provision” if there is
enough free space on the datastore to support the size of the disk when it becomes full. If the
datastore runs out of disk space, the virtual machine can become unstable and require
reinstallation.
If the “Lazy zero” and “Eager zero” options are available, select “Eager zero.”
2. Select the host you want to install Flow Gateway on from the left pane, right-click, and select Deploy
OVF Template.
3. Browse to the location of the OVA file. You can also enter the URL to specify the path to the location
of the file. Select Next.
4. Specify a name of the Flow Gateway deployment. Select a location to deploy the virtual machine
from the list of ESXi data-centers and folders. Select Next.
5. Select a host or a cluster that you want to deploy the product in to, then select Next.
8. Select the datastore that you want to use, then select Next.
9. On the Network Mapping page, map the source networks (ports) of the Gateway to destination
networks (port groups) on the ESXi host. Map the Primary and Auxiliary networks to the default ESXi
management port group (VM Network). Map the Monitor networks to the Monitor 0 port group.
1. From the ESXi host, select the Flow Gateway virtual machine.
2. If the virtual machine is powered on, power the machine off and click Edit.
5. Specify the size for the buffered flow data storage disk. We recommend that you allocate up to
500GB of space for each hard disk.
6. Expand the new hard disk menu by clicking on the arrow, and select Thick Provisioning Eager
Zeroed, and specify the location of the disk.
7. Keep the default setting for the Virtual Device Node. Verify that the mode settings are identical to
those of the system disk. By default, the system disk is not set to Independent mode.
9. Repeat steps 1 through 8 to add a second hard disk for flow buffering.
Licensing considerations
The license keys of SteelCentral virtual products are associated with the UUID on the virtual machine.
You can move the virtual machine without affecting licensing as the license keys will continue to work.
If you change the UUID of the virtual machine, you must contact Riverbed Support for an approved RMA
to move the license keys to another virtual machine.
Note: To move the Flow Gateway virtual machine to a different ESXi host, you can use the vMotion application.
When using the Storage vMotion, make sure to keep the UUID of the virtual machine. Edit the.vmx file and add the
following line: uuid.action=keep
The UUID is a 128-bit integer. The 16 bytes of this value are separated by spaces, except for a dash
between the eighth and ninth hexadecimal pairs, for example:
56 4d ef 2d 3f d4 14 e2-2e 04 c5 34 3a ec ee 65
After you deploy the Flow Gateway Virtual Edition on your VM, you can configure the Flow Gateway
environment.
This chapter describes how you enable network access to the product and complete additional
configuration before you activate the product licenses.
The appliance configures itself during the firstboot process which can take more than an hour
depending on system size. During this time, basic status messages are provided via the web user
interface and command line interface. Once firstboot completes, the appliance reboots and finishes
configuration so it is ready to use. The web user interface will be available for login when the Flow
Gateway is ready. Login as admin/admin to complete the initial setup.
The first time you log in to the Flow Gateway web user interface, the software displays a setup page. Parts
of this page are prepopulated with the IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway Specify the rest of
the initial configuration information as described below.
1. On the management network, use a web browser to navigate to the IP address of the new VM.
https://<Flow_Gateway_IP_address>
2. Log in to the Flow Gateway web user interface. Use the default user name and password “admin”
The first time you log in to the Flow Gateway user interface, it displays the Setup page.
– AUX Interface - If you intend to use the AUX interface, enter the IP address, netmask and
connection settings.
– Static Routes - If there are multiple subnets on the Aux interface network, or if you need to use a
gateway router other than the default gateway, you can define static routes.
– Time Configuration - Specify the time zone.
– Data Sources - You can configure the Flow Gateway to receive traffic flow information from
devices using NetFlow (versions 1, 5, 7 and 9), SteelFlow Net, CascadeFlow, IPFIX, sFlow
(versions 2, 4 and 5), and Packeteer (versions 1 and 2). You can specify one or more ports in a
comma-separated list for each type of flow data, up to a combined total of 50 ports.
You can also exclude data sources. Flow Gateway ignores data sent to it from addresses listed in
the Excluded Sources box. For example, it drops NetFlow data sent to it from a router whose
address is listed in the Excluded Sources box.
When you configure Flow Gateway to use the Aux and Management interfaces on separate
networks, select the Allow on interface option to control which interface is to receive traffic
flow data.
– SNMP MIB Configuration - Flow Gateway is set by default to use SNMP Version 1 and to allow MIB
browsing. If you are configuring SNMP at this time, obtain the necessary V1, V2C, or V3 information.
5. In the Change password page, change the password for the admin user.
Your browser session closes while the configuration changes are made. You can then log back in to
activate your licenses.
When you purchase the Flow Gateway, your purchase confirmation email includes a license request
token. You use this token to generate a license request key, that you use to obtain license keys from the
Riverbed licensing portal.
When you enter the license activation code on the Riverbed licensing portal, the portal generates a
license key for each license you have purchased. Copy these keys and enter them on the Flow Gateway
licensing page to activate the licenses features.
3. Paste or enter your license request token in the License request token field and click Submit.
The Flow Gateway generates a license activation code and displays it in a popup window.
2. Navigate to the Administration > Licenses page and click Add license(s) in the Licenses section.
The licenses window opens.
The Flow Gateway activates the licenses and displays them in a list. If your web user interface
session is terminated when the new licenses are activated, log back in and navigate to the
Administration > Licenses page.
• Verify the installation by checking to see if the Flow Gateway is monitoring traffic
• Go to the Administration > NetProfiler Export page and configure the Flow Gateway to send traffic
to the NetProfiler. For details, see the NetProfiler Export topic in the online help.
Flow Gateway can receive flow data from software running in the cloud and send the flow data to
NetProfiler for analysis and reporting. The sources of cloud flow data include:
https://support.riverbed.com/content/support/software/steelcentral-npm/appresponse-ar11.html
SteelCentral Agent
Flow Gateway can receive flow data from SteelCentral Agent to provide visibility into the cloud. This
requires deploying the agent and using the SteelCentral AppInternals product to configure it. Refer to
“Deploying the Agent as an NPM Data Source” in the AppInternals user documentation for instructions
on how to deploy and configure the agent.
https://doc.steelcentral.net/help/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/
wwhelp.htm?context=config_reference&topic=agentnpmdatasource