Reference Guide

398 Fabric OS Command Reference
53-1002921-02
flow
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FUNCTION Creating a flow
SYNOPSIS flow --create flow_name -feature feature_list
port_options frame_options [config_options]
DESCRIPTION Use this command to create a flow and by default activate the flow for the specified features. This
command validates the flow definition before creating a flow. If the flow definition is not supported by any
specified feature or if the flow definition is a duplicate of an existing active flow, the operation will
terminate with an appropriate error message. For more information on duplicate flows, refer to the Fabric
OS Administrator's Guide.
The following rules apply for creating a flow:
• You must specify at least one port options (-ingrport or -egrport) but not both.
• You must specify the source device (-srcdev), the destination device (-dstdev), or both. The source
device and the destination device can be learned using a wildcard ("*").
• The ingress port and egress port must reside in the local switch.
• The source device and destination device can reside either in the local or remote switch.
• You can create 512 flows on a Brocade director and 128 flows on switch-based system. Note that
each flow discovered when using "*" as a source device or destination device will count as one of
these flows. These system-discovered flows will impact the number of user-defined flows allowed to
be active.
• The configuration options -noactivate, -noconfig, and -bidir are optional.
• You can create up to 64 monitor flows and four generator flows per port.
• You can activate one mirror flow per chassis.
OPERANDS The --create command has the following operands:
flow_name
Specifies the name of the flow. Each flow name must be a unique string
composed of a maximum of 20 alphanumeric or underscore characters. The flow
name is case-insensitive and is always stored as lowercase.
-feature feature_list
Specifies a comma-separated list of features to activate for the flow. Specify "all"
to activate all features for a flow. Valid values for feature_list include the following:
monitor
Activates the Flow Monitor feature for a flow. The Flow Monitor feature monitors
and provides statistics for the specified flow.
The following configuration considerations apply for the Flow Monitor feature:
• The ingress port and egress port can be an SIM Port, F_Port, E_Port, or
EX_Port (Gen 5 port) on the local switch. The ingress port must be a Gen 5
port and egress port can be a Gen 4 port or Gen 5 port. The SIM Port must be
a Gen 5 port.
• VE_Port, VEX_Port, FCoE ports, and GigE are not supported.
• The source device and destination device can be a host or target switch, or a
wildcard ("*"). Using the wildcard ("*") enables Flow Vision to learn (discover)
all flows on an F_Port and displays statistics for each learnt flow. The learning
mode is supported only on Gen 5 F_Ports and trunked F_Ports.