Administrator Guide

Flow Vision Administrator’s Guide 43

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Flow Generator references

Flow Generator and MAPS

MAPS can be used to monitor SIM-Port traffic thresholds while Flow Generator flows are running.

Because MAPS treats SIM-Ports as F_Ports, MAPS can issue warnings on these ports if threshold

values are triggered. If you do not want to see MAPS warnings for SIM-Ports, disable MAPS

monitoring for those ports. Flow Generator traffic will also impact E_Ports; this may cause MAPS

warnings for E_Port throughput levels. Refer to the Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite

Administrator’s Guide for more information about working with MAPS.

Flow Generator and High Availability

On a High Availability (HA) failover, HA reboot, or a power cycle and reboot, both local and remote

flows are automatically deactivated. When SIM-Ports come back online from an HA failover or

HA reboot event, local flows are re-created and reactivated, and local traffic is restarted. Remote

flows are not reactivated. Inactive flows are re-created but not activated by an HA failover,

HA reboot, or a power cycle and reboot. For a power cycle and reboot, local flows are re-created but

not reactivated.

ATTENTION

For the first four flows that can be learned for Flow Generator, HA failover, HA reboot, or a power cycle

and reboot may cause different sub-flows to be re-created, as the order depends on the zone

database.

Refer to “High Availability and Flow Vision” on page 7 for more information.

Flow Generator limitations and considerations

The following limitations apply specifically to Flow Generator.

• If used on a live production system, Flow Generator traffic will compete with any existing traffic.

Consequently, E_Ports and FCIP links can become congested when using Flow Generator,

leading to throughput degradation. FCIP links are more prone to congestion than E_Ports.

• Only four active Flow Generator flows are allowed per ingress port.

• Flow Generator flows can only be mirrored at the ingress port; they cannot be mirrored at the

egress port.

• Flow Generator is not supported on Access Gateways or for Fibre Channel routers.

• Frame redirection is not supported for SIM-Ports.

• Zoning is not enforced. Sources and Destinations can be in different zones.

• Flow Generator gathers source and destination pairs from the zoning database for learning

flows only at the time the flow is activated. Subsequent changes to this database will not be

registered until a flow is reactivated.