Brocade Fabric Watch Administrator's Guide - Supporting Fabric OS v5.3.0 (53-1000438-01, June 2007)

2 Fabric Watch Administrator’s Guide

53-0000438-01

Introduction to fabric health

Fabric Watch lets you define how often to measure each switch and fabric element and to specify

notification thresholds. Whenever fabric elements exceed these thresholds, Fabric Watch

automatically provides notification using several methods, including e-mail messages, SNMP traps,

and log entries.

Fabric Watch provides the following 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

Following an event, Fabric Watch adds an entry to the internal port log for an individual switch

and freezes the log to ensure that detail-level information is available.

• Rapi Trap

Following an event, Fabric Watch forwards event information to a proxy switch, which then

forwards the information to a server to notify you.

• E-mail notification

Following an event, Fabric Watch creates and sends an informational e-mail to a designated

recipient.

Fabric Watch is designed for rapid deployment. Simply enabling Fabric Watch permits immediate

fabric monitoring. Fabric Watch is also designed for rapid custom configuration. You can easily

create and modify configuration files using a text editor and then distribute configurations to all the

switches in the SAN through the Fabric OS configuration management utility. Fabric Watch also

comes with preconfigured profiles for rapid implementation.

For information on configuring and managing your SAN, see the Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide.

Introduction to fabric health

Fabric health refers to the capability of the fabric to support data being routed through it. A healthy

fabric enables effective data transmission between networked devices.