HP StorageWorks Fabric OS 5.0.0 Fabric Watch User Guide (AA-RW1TA-TE, May 2005)

15Fabric OS 5.0.0 Fabric Watch user guide
1 An introduction to Fabric Watch
This chapter contains the following information:
• Fabric Watch overview, page 15
• Introduction to fabric health, page 17
• Changes to this guide for OS v5.0.0, page 17
Fabric Watch overview
Fabric Watch is an optional Storage Area Network (SAN) monitoring software for HP
StorageWorks switches running Fabric OS 2.2 or higher. It enables each switch to constantly
watch its SAN fabric for potential faults and to automatically alert you to problems long
before they become costly failures.
Fabric Watch tracks a variety of SAN fabric elements, events, and counters. Monitoring
fabric-wide events, ports, GBICs, and environmental parameters enables early fault detection
and isolation as well as performance measurement. You can select custom fabric elements
and alert thresholds or choose from a selection of preconfigured settings. You can also easily
integrate Fabric Watch with enterprise systems management solutions.
By implementing Fabric Watch, you can rapidly improve SAN availability and performance
without installing new software or system administration tools.
For a growing number of organizations, SAN fabrics are a mission-critical part of their
systems architecture. These fabrics can include hundreds of elements, such as hosts, storage
devices, switches, and inter-switch links (ISLs). An instrumentation solution for SANs delivers
optimal value by tracking a wide spectrum of fabric events. For instance, Fabric Watch
monitors:
• Fabric resources, including fabric reconfigurations, zoning changes, and new logins.
• Switch environmental functions such as temperature, power supply, and fan status, along
with security violations.
• Port state transitions, errors, and traffic information for multiple port classes as well as
operational values for supported models of “Smart” GBICs/SFPs.
• Performance information for AL_PA, end-to-end, and SCSI command metrics.