Brocade Fabric Manager Administrator's Guide v6.1.0 (53-10000610-02, June 2008)

Fabric Manager Administrator’s Guide 73
53-10000610-02
Work with switch groups and port groups
4
The format for the .csv file is:
WWN, name, comment
For example:
10:00:00:00:00:00:00:00, test_node, device node for testing purposes only
The parser ignores anything after the second comma to the end of the line.
FDMI host names
You can import FDMI host names as device port names. All FDMI host names and their WWNs that
are currently in the device port database table for the selected fabric are imported. Device port
names that match the WWN are renamed to the corresponding host name.
Work with switch groups and port groups
This section describes how to use Fabric Manager to create groups of SAN elements (switch groups
or port groups) that you can monitor and manage as a group.
Groups are global across Fabric Manager and are available only at the physical fabric level. Only
users that have physical fabric access to all of the managed fabrics can view the switch and port
groups. Users that are using the same Fabric Manager server see the same groups and can make
changes to these groups.
Creating groups allows you to organize switches or ports by function, type, firmware version, or any
other criteria that you select. You can also create functional hierarchies of groups. Using switch or
port groups simplifies your management tasks. For example, you can log in to all switches in a
group or activate licenses on all group members simultaneously. Additional reasons for creating
groups include the following:
• Create groups of switch model types or firmware versions to expedite firmware downloads.
• Activate licenses on all group members simultaneously.
• Group switches by function to monitor switches that belong to different departments or that
serve as a backbone to the SAN.
• Group switches by physical location to monitor fabrics in disparate locations.
• Group switches by SAN island to monitor or update individual islands.
• Group switches by redundancy so you can maintain one half of a fabric while the other half
continues to carry traffic.
• Nest fabrics to drill down to the source of a problem; for instance, if you create a switch group
for a campus and then nest within that switch groups for departments, you can move down the
hierarchy to determine the source of any status change.
• Create separate groups for monitoring and management to reduce unnecessary levels of
nesting.
• Group ports by certain devices and hosts to more easily monitor those elements.
• Use groups to simplify the monitoring view of a large or complex fabric.
See the following sections for information about working with switch and port groups:
• “The groups view” on page 74
• “Switch group creation and population” on page 76