HP StorageWorks Fabric OS 5.x Fabric Watch Administrator Guide (AA-RVJ0B-TE, September 2005)

Fabric OS 5.x Fabric Watch administrator guide 13
2 Fabric Watch concepts
This chapter contains the following sections:
• Fabric watch components, page 13
• Configuring events, page 19
• Port persistence, page 25
• Notification methods, page 25
• Switch policies, page 27
• Interpreting event messages, page 27
Fabric watch components
Fabric Watch uses a hierarchical organization to track the network device information it monitors. There is
a class, area, and element associated with every monitored behavior. Classes are the highest level in the
system, subdivided into one or more areas. Areas contain one or more elements.
The following sections explain this hierarchy and its application within Fabric Watch.
Classes
Classes are high-level categories of elements. Classes are intentionally wide groupings of similar fabric
devices or fabric data.
Examples of classes include Port (which includes all physical ports on a switch), Security (which includes
information related to unauthorized login attempts), and Environment (which contains information related
to the room temperature, supplied power and fan assemblies).
In some cases, classes are divided into subclasses. This additional level in the hierarchy increases the
flexibility of setting monitoring thresholds. You can use subclasses to add additional event monitoring to
fabric objects that meet the requirements of a subclass.
For example, ports connected to another switch can be monitored using both the Port class and E_Port
subclass. You can configure general port monitoring using the Port class and monitoring specific to a type
of port using the E_Port class. Ports connected to another switch can trigger events based on either of these
configurations. Ports that are not connected to another switch are not affected by the additional monitoring
configured into the E_Port class.
Table 2 describes the classes into which Fabric Watch groups all switch and fabric elements.
Table 2 Fabric Watch classes
Class Description
Environment Includes information about the physical environment in which the
switch resides and the internal environment of the switch. For
example, an Environment-class alarm alerts you to problems or
potential problems with temperature and power.
Fabric Groups areas of potential problems arising between devices,
including interswitch link (ISL) details, zoning, and traffic. A
Fabric-class alarm alerts you to problems or potential problems with
interconnectivity.
Field Replaceable Unit
(FRU)
Monitors the status of FRUs and provides an alert when a part
replacement is needed. This class monitors states, not thresholds.