Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Fabric Manager Software Configuration Guide, NX-OS 4.0 (OL-16598-01, June 2008)

CHAPTER
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20-1
Nexus 5000 Series Switch Fabric Manager Software Configuration Guide
OL-16598-01
20
Configuring SPAN
The Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) feature (sometimes called port mirroring or port monitoring)
selects network traffic for analysis by a network analyzer. The network analyzer can be a Cisco
SwitchProbe, a Fibre Channel Analyzer, or other Remote Monitoring (RMON) probes.
This section includes the following topics:
• Information About SPAN Sources, page 20-1
• Information About SPAN Destinations, page 20-2
• Configuring SPAN, page 20-3
• Default SPAN Settings, page 20-5
Information About SPAN Sources
SPAN sources refer to the interfaces from which traffic can be monitored. The Nexus 5000 Series switch
supports Ethernet, virtual Ethernet, Fibre Channel, virtual Fibre Channel, Port Channels, SAN port
channels, VLANs, and VSANs as SPAN sources. In the case of VLANs or VSANs, all supported
interfaces in the specified VLAN or VSAN are included as SPAN sources. You can choose the SPAN
traffic in the ingress direction, the egress direction, or both directions for Ethernet, virtual Ethernet,
Fibre Channel, and virtual Fibre Channel source interfaces:
• Ingress source (Rx)—Traffic entering the switch through this source interface is copied to the SPAN
destination port.
• Egress source (Tx)—Traffic exiting the switch through this source interface is copied to the SPAN
destination port.
Note Device Manager does not support the configuration of Ethernet or virtual Ethernet interfaces as source
ports.
Characteristics of Source Ports
A source port, also called a monitored port, is a switched interface that you monitor for network traffic
analysis. The switch supports any number of ingress source ports (up to the maximum number of
available ports on the switch) and any number of source VLANs or VSANs.
A source port has these characteristics: