Fabric Watch Administrator's Guide v6.4.0 (53-1001770-01, June 2010)

74 Fabric Watch Administrator’s Guide

53-1001770-01

Port fencing

Setting the port persistence time

Port persistence is used to transition a port into a marginal status. Fabric Watch does not record

the event until the event persists for a length of time equal to the port persistence time. If the port

returns to normal boundaries before the port persistence time elapses, Fabric Watch does not

record the event.

The port persistent time is measured in seconds and can be configured. Configuring the port

persistence time to zero disables this feature. The default value for port persistence is 18 seconds.

1. Use the fwSet --port -persistence command to set the port persistence time.

switch:admin> portthconfig --show [port_type]

2. Set the port persistence time.

switch:admin> fwSet --port -persistence seconds

Port fencing

Port fencing monitors ports for erratic behavior and disables a port if specified error conditions are

met. Supported port types include physical ports, E_Ports, FOP_Ports, FCU_Ports, and Virtual

E_Ports (VE_Ports).

Active or online ports with errors that exceed the threshold are fenced after a six-second delay. In

cases where two types of errors occur within the six-second interval, the port is disabled and

indicates the reason code for the first error type that exceeded the threshold. The following error

types are supported on port fencing:

• Invalid Transmission Words (ITW)

• Invalid Cyclic Redundancy Checks (CRC)

• Link Reset (LR)

• State Change (ST)

• Protocol Error (PE)

• Class 3 discard frames (C3TXO)

NOTE

The execution of the portFencing command is subject to Virtual Fabric or Admin Domain restrictions

that may be in place. Refer to the Fabric OS Command Reference Manual for details.

The allowed threshold configuration settings are displayed on a per-class basis. FOP_Port class

thresholds apply to the entire switch. You can set different thresholds for Storage and Host

FOP_Ports if they are on different switches, based on the fabric configuration.