Fabric Watch Notification Types; E-Mail Alert; Snmp Traps - Brocade Communications Systems 8 Administrator's Manual

Fabric Watch notification types

Fabric Watch provides event notifications in several different formats to ensure that event details
are accessible from all platforms and operating systems. In response to an event, Fabric Watch can
record event data as any (or all) of the following alarm options.

E-mail alert

An e-mail alert sends information about a switch event to a specified e-mail address. An e-mail
alert can send information about any error from any element, area, and class (only one e-mail
recipient can be configured per class). The e-mail specifies the threshold and describes the event,
much like an error message.
You can configure e-mail alerts using one of the following methods:
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Enabling e-mail alerts for the Changed threshold state in several areas can quickly result in a
significant amount of e-mail. Fabric Watch discards e-mail alerts when more than 100 are
generated within a minute, which minimizes memory use.

SNMP traps

In environments where you have a high number of messages coming from a variety of switches, you
might want to receive them in a single location and view them using a graphical user interface
(GUI). In this type of scenario, the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) notifications
might be the most efficient notification method. You can avoid having to log in to each switch
individually as you would have to do for error log notifications.
SNMP performs an operation called a trap that notifies a management station using SNMP when
events occur. Log entries can also trigger SNMP traps if the SNMP agent is configured. When the
SNMP agent is configured to a specific error message level, error messages at that level trigger
SNMP traps.
An SNMP trap forwards the following information to an SNMP management station:
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NOTE
The SNMP trap stores event information but does not actively send alerts.
Fabric Watch Administrator's Guide
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Use the dnsConfig command to configure DNS settings to connect the switch to a DNS server.
In case a DNS server is not available, e-mails can be forwarded through a relay host. You can
configure the relay host IP address using the fwMailCfg command.
Name of the element whose counter registered an event
Class, area, and index number of the threshold that the counter crossed
Event type
Value of the counter that exceeded the threshold
State of the element that triggered the alarm
Source of the trap

Fabric Watch notification types

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