Fabric Watch Monitoring in a DRM Environment - Application Notes

Fabric Watch Overview

Application Notes – Fabric Watch Monitoring in a DRM Environment 5

The elements that Fabric Watch monitors are grouped as follows:

• Fabric events (such as topology reconfigurations and zone changes)

• Switch environment (such as fans, power supplies, and temperature)

• Ports (state changes, errors, and performance)

• Gigabit Interface Converters (GBICs) for switches equipped with smart GBICs

The version of Fabric Watch installed on your switch corresponds with the switch firmware version or

version of the fabric operating system. Fabric Watch Version 3.0 requires a StorageWorks Fibre

Channel SAN switch running Fabric Operating System Version 3.0. Earlier versions of Fabric Watch

do not have all the functionality of the latest version, but still allow sufficient monitoring capabilities

for the purpose of this document. Features discussed here that are not available with your installation

of Fabric Watch are most likely due to using an earlier version of switch firmware.

Threshold Descriptions

Three types of threshold behavior models are used in Fabric Watch. These are:

• Range thresholds

• Rising/Falling thresholds

• Change monitor thresholds

Range Threshold

A range threshold has an upper and lower boundary (see Figure 2), and all values between these two

boundaries fall in the desired range. If a value exceeds (crosses) the upper or lower boundaries, then an

event occurs (for example, time interval 2). Buffers can be established to reduce the number of event

notifications. When a value crossing a boundary comes back into a buffer zone, event alarms are not

registered (time interval 3). An event can occur when a value from the buffer zone enters the desired

range between the buffer zones (time interval 4) if the alarm notification is set to “in between” and

preceded by an event exceeding a boundary.

Figure 2: Range threshold example

Temp

(Celsius)

Time Interval

Upper boundary (high threshold)

Upper buffer

Lower buffer

Lower boundary (low threshold)

Buffer zone

CXO7966A

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