MIB Reference Guide

4 Fabric OS MIB Reference

53-1002750-01

Understanding SNMP basics

Since different vendors vary the information in their private enterprise MIBs, it is necessary to verify

their information. The Fibre Channel MIB standards dictate that certain information be included in

all MIBs: it is the vendors’ responsibility to follow the standards. The standards are as follows:

• FibreAlliance (FA) MIB: Brocade supports v4.4. and later releases.

• Fabric Element (FE) MIB: accepted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Brocade supports FE_RFC2837.mib under the MIB-II branch in Fabric OS v7.1.0, v7.0.0,

v6.4.1_fcoe, v6.4.0, v6.3.0, v6.2.0, v6.1.2_CEE, v6.1.0, and v6.0.0. The latest version of the

FE MIB references the FRAMEWORK.MIB and, based on the MIB browser, it is necessary to

load this MIB before the FE.MIB. For more information, refer to “Loading Brocade MIBs” on

page 7.

Once loaded, the MAX-ACCESS provides access levels between the agent and management station.

The access levels are as follows:

• not accessible

You cannot read or write to this variable.

• read create

Specifies a tabular object that can be read, modified, or created as a new row in a table.

• read only - Public

You can only monitor information.

• read-write - Private

You can read or modify this variable.

• accessible-to-notify

You can read this information only through traps.

Understanding SNMP traps

An unsolicited message that comes to the management station from the SNMP agent on the

device is called a trap. Brocade switches send traps out on UDP port 162 and to any configured

port. In order to receive traps, the management station IP address and severity level must be

configured on the switch. Up to six trap recipients can be configured using Web Tools or the

snmpConfig command. You can define a different message severity level for each recipient so that

some recipients receive all trap messages and others receive only the most critical.

NOTE

Due to design limitation, IP address validation cannot be done for trap recipients.

There are two main MIB trap choices:

• FibreAlliance MIB trap - Associated with the Fibre Alliance MIB (FA-MIB), this MIB manages SAN

switches and devices from any company that complies with Fibre Alliance specifications.

• Brocade-specific MIB trap - Associated with the Brocade-specific Brocade MIB (SW-MIB),

manages Brocade switches only.

There is some overlap in the functionality of these MIBs. If you enable both SW-MIB and FA-MIB

traps, you could receive duplicate messages for the switch events that trigger the trap.