Content
Brief description
The BVQ SAN Package is a complete new extension package for BVQ. It introduces support for Brocade SAN switches and directors. It enables you to interactively explore your SAN configuration and check it for issues, chart SAN Switch port performance and error metrics, create reports about port utilization and drill through all the layers between SVC, BVQ, and VMware objects in end to end views.
Licensing
Similar to all other available BVQ add on packages, its licensing is based on the capacity of a licensed primary system platform (Spectrum virtualize (SVC), Storwize, ...). Please review the BVQ License Information Page or ask your sales contact for more information.
To collect information a BVQ SAN Scanner needs to be configured to connect to a Brocade SMI/S Provider, which can be enabled as part of a Brocade Network Advisor (BNA). There is an issue with the Brocade SMI provider and the tracking of changes, so we strongly recommend to use the free (headless) Brocade SMI provider separately or at least to switch off "Track changes" in the BNA. See Supported Environments for more details and the supported versions of the Brocade SMI provider.
Supported SAN objects
This first version of the BVQ SAN Package supports basic elements of a SAN environment. The following overview depicts the elementary relationships of these objects and their link to connected BVQ objects:
Where to find SAN objects?
Similar to all other objects, they show up in the BVQ Path browser inside the view property panel or can be opened as a Table from the Favorite browser. All SAN objects can be combined in an end to end relation to all other objects.
| SAN objects in view Path browser | SAN object Table views in BVQ Favorites |
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BVQ SAN object details
| SAN Agent | The SMI Provider gathering information for the monitored SAN Devices |
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| SAN | The SAN to which the monitored SAN Fabrics belong to. Only routed SANs will contain more than one SAN Fabric in a SAN. |
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SAN Fabric | Part of a SAN, that contains one or more interlinked (logical) SAN Switches. |
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| SAN Switch | Represents a logical SAN Switch configured inside a physical SAN Switch or Director as part of a SAN Fabric. |
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| SAN Chassis | Represents the physical SAN Switch or Director. A BVQ Room connected to a BVQ Site can be configured for it. |
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| SAN Switch port | Fiber channel Port of a SAN Switch. This can be physically cabled to a SAN Node port or to a SAN Switch port of another Switch. |
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| SAN Trunk | Multiple SAN Switch ISLs can be bundled to a SAN Trunk to improve the performance an availability of a Switch to Switch connection. |
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| SAN ISL | Interconnection between two SAN Switch ports to bind another SAN Switch into the same SAN Fabric. Multiple ISLs can be grouped to a SAN Trunk |
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| SAN Node port | Fiber channel port inside a SAN attached device (host, storage system, ...) connected to a SAN Switch port. BVQ directly connects them to gathered Ports of BVQ monitored storage systems.
Primary identifier: World Wide Port Name (WWPN) |
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| SAN Node | One or more ports physically places inside the same device show up in a SAN Node.
Primary identifier: World Wide Node Name (WWNN) |
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| SAN Platform | A configured FDMI driver of a SAN Node device can deliver more helpful information about the system driving the SAN Node ports (e.g. Hostname, Device driver Version). |
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Object attributes
BVQ displays the full set of all reported attributes for each supported SAN object. Be aware that only a subset of configuration parameters is reported by the Brocade SMI provider. In addition, BVQ calculates counters for each grouping object, so that their number of grouped objects are known. For example a SAN Fabric knows how many SAN Switches it contains, how many SAN Switch ports they have and how many of them are connected or free for use. Please explore the BVQ SAN Table view favorites to get an impression of the most important attributes.
The BVQ SAN Package gathers all SAN Switch port statistics delivered from the Brocade SMI provider. Similar to all other statistics, you can simply drill into a chart with the statistics related to an object with a simple click on the SAN entry in the context menu of this object:
That opens our well known BVQ Chart view, where you can select statistic metrics in the selection panel. The following screenshot shows the full set of available metrics in the expert tab:
SAN Switch port statistic details
These are the available SAN Switch port statistics in more detail:
| Group | Metric | Unit | Description |
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Data transfer
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| Data rate | Rx | MiB/s | Received data rate |
| Data rate | Tx | MiB/s | Sent data rate |
| Data rate | Rx+Tx | MiB/s | Overall data rate |
| Data rate | Rx% | % | % received of total transferred data |
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| Frame rate | Rx | Frames/s | Received frame rate |
| Frame rate | Tx | Frames/s | Sent frame rate |
| Frame rate | Rx+Tx | Frames/s | Overall frame rate |
| Frame rate | Rx% | % | % received of total transferred frames |
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| Frame size | Rx | Byte | Framesize received |
| Frame size | Tx | Byte | Framesize sent |
| Frame size | Rx&Tx | Byte | Weighted average overall framesize |
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| Frame rate by class | Rx C2 | Frames/s | Received class 2 frame rate |
| Frame rate by class | Rx C3 | Frames/s | Received class 3 frame rate |
| Logical layer |
Buffer credit wait | % | % | Buffer to buffer credit zero wait % |
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| Frame discards | RxTO | Frames/s | Frame timeout rate in receive buffer |
Frame discards | TxTO | Frames/s | Frame timeout rate in transmit buffer |
Frame discards | Other | Frames/s | All other frame discards not due to a timeout (unreachable, zone misses, unrouteable ...) |
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| Offline sequences | Rx | Count/s | Offline sequences receive rate |
| Offline sequences | Tx | Count/s | Offline sequence send rate |
| Offline sequences | Rx+Tx | Count/s | Overall offline sequence rate |
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| Link resets | Rx | Count/s | Link reset receive rate |
| Link resets | Tx | Count/s | Link reset send rate |
| Link resets | Rx+Tx | Count/s | Overall link reset rate |
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| Invalid ordered sets | Rx | Count/s | Invalid ordered set rate |
| Physical layer |
| Encoding errors | In | Count/s | Rate of encoding errors inside frame |
| Encoding errors | Out | Count/s | Rate of encoding errors outside frame |
| Encoding errors | In+Out | Count/s | Overall Encoding error rate |
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| CRC errors | GEOF | Count/s | Rate of CRC errors with good End Of Frame (EOF) delimiter |
| CRC errors | Overall | Count/s | Rate of all CRC errors |
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| Link errors | LF | Count/s | Link failure rate |
| Link errors | LSY | Count/s | Loss of sync rate |
| Link errors | LSI | Count/s | Loss of signal rate |
| Lower level |
| Errors | Protocol | Count/s | Protocol error rate |
| Errors | Address | Count/s | Address error rate |
| Errors | Delimiter | Count/s | Delimiter error rate |
| Errors | Too long | Count/s | Rate of too long frames |
Use cases
You can find a collection of use cases on the BVQ SAN Package (Brocade) page.
Known restrictions
| SAN Routing | Toleration support only. Full Feature support can be added to a later release |
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| SAN Zoning | Will be added in the next major release |
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| SAN Access gateway | Will be added in the next major release |
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| SAN Director blade | Limited support. Currently the blade slot number is unknown. This will be added in one of the next releases. |
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| SAN NPIV | Limited support. Full feature support will be added in the next major release |
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| Separate SMI Provider | Recommended. A problem in the SMI provider of current BNA versions prohibits its use in combination with BNA change tracking. |
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