Fabric Watch Monitoring in a DRM Environment - Application Notes

Fabric Watch Overview
4 Application Notes – Fabric Watch Monitoring in a DRM Environment
Additional hardware to support extra storage devices is needed at remote sites to allow a business to
quickly resume processing in the case of a disaster at the primary site. This all demonstrates the
importance of monitoring the fabric to quickly identify potential problems before a network
component fails.
These application notes address the use of Fabric Watch to monitor a fabric and some of its devices.
Fabric Watch on StorageWorks Fibre Channel SAN switches works within a Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP) framework. Manageable network devices (or elements) contain a
software component called a management agent. The agent monitors the various subsystems of the
network element and stores this information in a management information base (MIB). Conceptually,
the MIB is a database that can be written to and read by a management application using the SNMP
protocol.
SANs are different and vary in configuration, so there are no ideal monitoring settings that work for all
circumstances. This document suggests how Fabric Watch, in combination with other network
applications, can be used to monitor for important DRM events occurring in fabrics, links, and ports.
Fabric Watch Overview
Fabric Watch software monitors the performance and status of DRM fabric and switch elements,
alerting system administrators to potential problems. System administrators are able to place limits or
thresholds on these elements and receive an alarm when a value or counter exceeds a defined limit. The
software components of Fabric Watch are installed on StorageWorks Fibre Channel SAN switches and
work with other software products in the environment to provide a complete monitoring solution (see
Figure 1). These other software products, like Web Tools, Fabric Manager, and an SNMP management
station, work with Fabric Watch to allow easier configuration and to handle event notifications.
Figure 1: Fabric Watch in a DRM environment
Host
CXO7842A
Browser Access to WebTools
SNMP Management Station
Fabric Manager (Optional)
Switch
Controller
Ethernet
Storage
Fabric Watch
MIB
SNMP Agent