Central Management Console (CMC)

[jbroom]

Personally I think that Riverbed is doing a rather poor job at the moment in regards to Steelheads & CMC's.

On the one hand all the fanfare on the latest and greatest v7.x and how great this is in an environment with lots of SH's, but on the other hand not providing a way to manage multiple units.

They have a good central management solution (the CMC), but suddenly we're left out in the cold as far as being able to globally push things and have to manage things on a one-by-one basis.

The CMC is (or at least it should be in my opinion -and it certainly is for us, and I'm sure for others) an integral part of the Steelhead solution and thus should be rolled out in unison with RiOS updates.

You update the RiOS (other than for an emergency engineering security hotfix or similar), and you SHOULD have a system that manages the devices.

Putting out a whole new version (v7) at Xmas 2011, and then 4 months later still not having a way to manage it and at best hearing "rumours" that "maybe" sometime in August or September is really unacceptable.

Is Riverbed trying to kill big site customers? Or force them to ignore the new version? Does it not want to sell CMC's?

And although the format may be different, scanning through the options on a v6.5 compared to a v7, there's very little difference, so it can't be THAT difficult to update the CMC, can it? (we're certainly a bit peeved at the moment)

Can some thought be put on this?????

Regards,

John Broomfield, First Quantum Minerals.

[joncole]

Our issue is really to do with purchasing the new CX appliances which could possibly be delivered with v7, these boxes are being put in VSAT offices so poor comms and therefore downgrading an issue which is why I was looking at upgrading the rest of our estate (130 steelheads) but clearly this is proving to be an issue.

Jon

[djewhurst]

Not in a way that would allow you to fetch the config.  The problem is that the CMC is not aware of what the config looks like since the Steelhead is running newer code.  Since the CMC may not be able to parse some of it, it will not fetch it. 

Are you getting a config change alarm and that is why you want to fetch the config?  In that case, the work around would probably be disable the "Configuration Change" alarm  via Configure › System Settings › Alarms and clear the current alarm in the CLI:

enable

stats alarm config_change clear

[joncole]

thanks, is it possible to disable v7 features on 6.5.3 RiOS SHA?

[djewhurst]

You can not fetch the SH config because it may have 7.0 features enabled.  The CMC is unaware of these so can not do this operation.  You can push 6.5 policies out though.

[cgeary]

Please note that that date is a pencil mark at the moment. It could be anytime around August/September time.

[joncole]

I hear the tentative date for CMC 7.0 is Aug 13, 2012.

[joncole]

This issue doesnt only relate to RiOS 7.0 features.

We have CMC 6.5.3 and am testing 7.0 on a few SHA's and found that I am not able to Fetch the appliance config.

Jon.

[djewhurst]

https://supportkb.riverbed.com/support/index?page=content&legacyid=501A0000000Pmk1

Will show you what version of CMC can manage which versions of RiOS.  The current version of CMC, 6.5.3, can manage 6.5 RiOS features on a RiOS 7.0 Steelhead.  So anything new in RiOS 7.0 will not be supported.  When CMC 7.0 comes out, it should be feature compatible with RiOS 7.

Currently, you can monitor Steelhead Mobile Controllers and Interceptors but not manage them.

For any real future information, your sales team is the appropriate avenue for answers.  Some information may require a NDA.

[blugger]

Hi together,

do you have any update on this topic? I have some questions regarding the CMC.

1. Will it support RIOS7 at all?

2. Will all existing features be supported?

3. Is there something special that is not supported yet?

4. Wil the new appliances be integraded into the CMC?

It would be great to get some answere in that respect.

Thx and BR

Ben