An Introduction To Fabric Watch; Fabric Watch Overview - HP StorageWorks 2/64 - Core Switch Administrator's Manual

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An introduction to Fabric Watch

This chapter contains the following information:
• Fabric Watch
• Introduction to fabric

Fabric Watch overview

Fabric Watch is an optional Storage Area Network (SAN) monitoring software for B-Series HP
StorageWorks switches running Fabric OS 2.2 or higher. It enables each switch to constantly watch its
SAN fabric for potential faults and to automatically alert you to problems long before they become costly
failures.
Fabric Watch tracks a variety of SAN fabric elements, events, and counters. Monitoring fabric-wide events,
ports, GBICs, and environmental parameters enables early fault detection and isolation as well as
performance measurement. You can select custom fabric elements and alert thresholds or choose from a
selection of preconfigured settings. You can also easily integrate Fabric Watch with enterprise systems
management solutions.
By implementing Fabric Watch, you can rapidly improve SAN availability and performance without
installing new software or system administration tools.
For a growing number of organizations, SAN fabrics are a mission-critical part of their systems
architecture. These fabrics can include hundreds of elements, such as hosts, storage devices, switches, and
inter-switch links (ISLs). An instrumentation solution for SANs delivers optimal value by tracking a wide
spectrum of fabric events. For instance, Fabric Watch monitors:
•
Fabric resources, including fabric reconfigurations, zoning changes, and new logins.
• Switch environmental functions such as temperature, power supply, and fan status, along with security
violations.
•
Port state transitions, errors, and traffic information for multiple port classes as well as operational
values for supported models of "Smart" GBICs/SFPs.
•
Performance information for AL_PA, end-to-end, and SCSI command metrics.
Fabric Watch lets you define notification thresholds. Whenever fabric elements exceed these thresholds,
Fabric Watch automatically provides notification using several methods, including email messages, SNMP
traps, and log entries.
Fabric Watch provides the following two types of automatic notifications:
• A continuous alarm provides a warning message whenever a threshold is breached; it continues to
send alerts until the condition is corrected. For example, if a switch exceeds its temperature threshold,
Fabric Watch activates an alarm at every measurement interval until the temperature returns to an
acceptable level.
• A triggered alarm generates the first warning when a threshold condition is reached and a second
alarm when the threshold condition is cleared.
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:
• Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) trap
Following an event, Fabric Watch transmits critical event data as an SNMP trap. Support for SNMP
makes Fabric Watch readily compatible with both network and enterprise management solutions.
• Event log entry
Following an event, Fabric Watch adds an entry to the internal Event Log for an individual switch, which
stores up to 1024 error messages.
• Lock port log
overview, page 11
health, page 12
Fabric OS 5.x Fabric Watch administrator guide 11