15Optimizing Fabric Behavior; Introduction To Adaptive Networking; Top Talkers; Traffic Isolation - HP A7533A - Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch Base Administrator's Manual

15
Optimizing fabric behavior
This chapter describes the Adaptive Networking features.

Introduction to adaptive networking

Adaptive Networking is a suite of tools and capabilities that enable you to ensure optimized behavior in
the SAN. Even under the worst congestion conditions, the Adaptive Networking features can maximize the
fabric behavior and provide necessary bandwidth for high-priority, mission-critical applications and
connections.
The following sections cover three features in the Adaptive Networking suite: Traffic Isolation, QoS Ingress
Rate Limiting, and QoS SID/DID Traffic Prioritization.
Top Talkers, which is another Adaptive Networking feature, is described briefly in this chapter and
described in detail in

Top Talkers

The Top Talkers feature provides real-time information about the top "n" bandwidth-consuming flows from a
set of a large number of flows passing through a specific port in the network. You can use Top Talkers to
identify the SID/DID pairs that consume the most bandwidth and can then configure them with certain
QoS attributes so they get proper priority.
The Top Talker feature is part of the optionally licensed Advanced Performance Monitoring feature. See
"Identifying top bandwidth users (Top

Traffic Isolation

The Traffic Isolation feature allows you to control the flow of interswitch traffic by creating a dedicated path
for traffic flowing from a specific set of source ports (N_Ports). For example, you might use Traffic Isolation
for the following scenarios:
• To dedicate an ISL to high priority, host-to-target traffic.
• To force high volume, low priority traffic onto a given ISL to limit the effect on the fabric of this high
traffic pattern.
Traffic Isolation is implemented using a special zone, called a Traffic Isolation zone (TI zone). A TI zone
indicates the set of N_Ports and E_Ports to be used for a specific traffic flow. When a TI zone is activated,
the fabric attempts to isolate all inter-switch traffic entering from a member of the zone to only those E_Ports
that have been included in the zone. The fabric also attempts to exclude traffic not in the TI zone from using
E_Ports within that TI zone.
"Administering Advanced Performance
Talkers)" on page 370 for detailed information about Top Talkers.
Monitoring" on page 361.
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