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Integrated, topology-aware fabric and switch management simplifies configuration, monitoring, and troubleshooting for Cisco® MDS 9000 Family and Nexus 5000 Family switches.
Introduction
Cisco Fabric Manager is a responsive, easy-to-use, Web-based application that simplifies the management of Cisco switches in storage area networks (SANs) through an integrated approach to switch and fabric administration. Cisco Fabric Manager offers storage administrators fabricwide management capabilities, including discovery, multiple-switch configuration, continuous network monitoring, and troubleshooting. This powerful approach greatly reduces switch setup times, increases overall fabric reliability, and provides robust diagnostics for resolving network problems and configuration inconsistencies.
With the Cisco Fabric Manager intuitive GUI, storage administrators can compare switch configurations side by side, perform configuration policy checks across switches, set alarm thresholds to report to third-party fault-management applications, view individual device and aggregate statistics in real time, and analyze historical performance statistics. All these capabilities are available through a secure interface that facilitates remote management from almost any location (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Cisco Fabric Manager User Interface
Cisco Fabric Manager Highlights
Cisco Fabric Manager includes the following features:
• Switch-embedded Java application: This application integrates switch and fabric management in a single, performance-optimized tool that ships with every Cisco MDS 9000 Family and Nexus 5000 Family switch.
• Fabric visualization: Cisco Fabric Manager performs centralized, automated discovery and displays storage network topology, connectivity, and zone and virtual SAN (VSAN) highlighting, allowing identification of network health and configuration concerns at a glance.
• Multiple views, including fabric, device, summary, and operation views: Cisco Fabric Manager simplifies configuration and monitoring of multiple switches and facilitates configuration replication.
• Comprehensive configuration across multiple switches: Cisco Fabric Manager provides integrated fabric-, switch-, and port-level configuration; it also simplifies zone, VSAN, Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP), Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI), IBM Fiber Connection (FICON), and intelligent services configuration.
• Flexible monitoring and alerts: Cisco Fabric Manager presents real-time and historical performance-monitoring statistics in tabular and graphical formats. Performance-monitoring thresholds and configuration of threshold-based alerts, including Call Home, facilitate rapid response to exception conditions.
• Historical performance monitoring: Cisco Fabric Manager provides tabular and graphical reports showing daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly traffic for Inter-Switch Links (ISLs), host and storage connections, and traffic between specific Fibre Channel sources and destinations. Top 10 and daily summary reports present fabricwide statistics that greatly simplify network hotspot analysis.
• Powerful configuration analysis: Cisco Fabric Manager performs zone-merge analysis and configuration checking, simplifying resolution of problems, facilitating successful fabric merges, and resolving configuration inconsistencies automatically.
• Network diagnostics: Cisco Fabric Manager probes network and switch health with Fibre Channel ping and traceroute, allowing administrators to rapidly pinpoint network connectivity and performance problems.
• Comprehensive network security: Cisco Fabric Manager protects against unauthorized management access with Simple Network Management Protocol Version 3 (SNMPv3), Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol, and role-based access control (RBAC).
Device Discovery and Topology Mapping
Cisco Fabric Manager provides extensive device discovery, topology mapping, and information viewing capabilities. All functions are available through a single, unified interface. Discovery is based on fabric information contained within Cisco SAN switches. This switch-based discovery provides quick and accurate topology representations and allows Cisco Fabric Manager to manage multiple fabrics efficiently from a single application.
Device Discovery
Cisco Fabric Manager uses standards-based discovery protocols, including Fibre Channel Generic Services (FC-GS), Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF), and SCSI-3 to automatically discover all devices and interconnects on one or more fabrics. Discovery is centralized for consistent, efficient network management. All available switches, host bus adapters (HBAs), and storage devices are discovered. Information discovered includes device names, software revision levels, vendors, ISLs, PortChannels, and VSANs, which can be viewed in the topology map and in tabular form. Fabric Device Management Interface (FMDI) support allows HBA model, serial number and firmware version, and host operating system type and version discovery without host agents.
Topology Mapping
Cisco Fabric Manager provides an accurate view of multiple fabrics in a single window by displaying topology maps based on device discovery information. The user can modify the topology map icon layout with an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface. The topology map shows device interconnections and highlights configuration information such as zones, VSANs, and ISLs exceeding utilization thresholds. The topology map also provides a visual context for launching command-line interface (CLI) sessions, configuring PortChannels, and opening device managers.
The topology map can be saved as a graphics file or in Microsoft Visio output formats. The Visio format file saves the topology as objects and text representing switches, hosts and storage devices, and their interconnections, enabling it to be used for SAN planning. SAN architects can copy and paste devices and add connections to illustrate proposed network changes.
Flexible Views
The Cisco Fabric Manager user interface is optimized for efficiency, with multiple views available simultaneously. The integrated approach to fabric and switch management that Cisco Fabric Manager provides helps ensure that all switch statistics and standard configuration parameters are readily accessible through the fabric view, device view, summary view, and operation view. Information in the fabric view can be filtered to limit the display to the items of greatest interest. For even greater efficiency, the basic user interface mode can be configured to streamline access to features used most frequently. Access to related views and configuration parameters is only a click away.
Fabric View
The main fabric view window (Figure 2) provides a high-level view and central point for managing multiple Cisco SAN switches. The fabric view displays a comprehensive overview of a storage network fabric, incorporating all switches and storage devices. The navigation tree provides logical, hierarchical access to available fabric services, events, networking, and administrative options. For example, VSANs or zones can be displayed with a single click. The fabric view presents parameters and status information for multiple switches side by side, making it easy to spot inconsistencies and to copy settings from one switch to another. In addition, topology maps, historical performance reports, log information, and traps can be displayed for the entire fabric.
Figure 2. Main Fabric View Window
Device View
Clicking a switch icon in the fabric view activates the device view, allowing administrators to focus on a specific switch and determine its overall status at a glance. The device view provides realistic, graphical representations of switches. Color-coded status indicators are provided for all major components, including the chassis, fans, power supplies, supervisor engine modules, switching modules, and individual ports. Clicking a particular component provides immediate access to detailed status information and configuration parameters (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Device Views
Summary View
The summary view allows administrators to analyze performance concerns, diagnose problems, and change parameters to resolve problems or inconsistencies. This view shows aggregated statistics for the active supervisor module and all active switch ports (Figure 4). Capabilities such as column reorganization, sorting, and color coding enhance information accessibility and clarity. Administrators can also access in-depth statistics. Real-time statistics are presented in tabular or graphical formats, with bar, line, area, and pie chart options. To document settings or statistics, users can export the current state of information to a file or output it to a printer.
Figure 4. Summary View Window
Operation View
The operation view provides remote access to historical performance reports, inventory information, and fabric events through a standard Web browser (client) interface (Figure 5). This view provides convenient access to important information needed to assess SAN health and performance for day-to-day operations. Inventory and events can be filtered to provide reports on all SANs being monitored or for a specific SAN, physical fabric, or VSAN. Historical performance reports can be filtered to show statistics for the last day, week, month, or year for host or storage connections, ISLs, or traffic between specific Fibre Channel sources and destinations. Performance statistics are presented in tabular form and as charts for throughput and error trend analysis. The operation view can be transparently integrated with CiscoWorks as a drop-in application for more comprehensive Cisco network management from a single console.
Figure 5. Operation View Windows
Configuration
Cisco Fabric Manager offers powerful configuration capabilities for installing switches, tuning the fabric after it is operational, and setting up zones, network security, and VSANs. Wizards are provided to accelerate configuration and eliminate errors in configuring zones, inter-VSAN routing, PortChannels, FCIP tunnels, and IP access control lists (ACLs) and to perform software updates (Figure 6). Switch parameters, readily accessible through the navigation tree, can be edited quickly within the information tables. This full-featured, fabric-oriented management tool provides an ideal means for making immediate configuration changes to one or many switches. There is no need to switch back and forth between the CLI and the Cisco Fabric Manager, because all operating statistics and configuration parameters are accessible through both.
Figure 6. FCIP, PortChannel, and IP ACL Configuration Wizards
Switch software and configuration downloads also can be managed with ease. Cisco Fabric Manager can initiate software-image and configuration-file downloads to apply critical updates and load new or saved configurations.
Fabricwide Configuration
All Fibre Channel fabric services can be monitored and configured from Cisco Fabric Manager. With a fabricwide view, rapid configuration of multiple switches is simple and efficient because parameters for multiple switches are displayed collectively, allowing quick detection of inconsistencies and easy application of changes on multiple switches using a simple copy-and-paste process.
Cisco put special attention into optimizing the Cisco Fabric Manager interface for complex or frequently performed tasks. Because zone management is a crucial and potentially complex task, a tree structure is provided to facilitate browsing of the complete zone database and active zone sets. Zones can be created and modified easily using cloning and drag-and-drop techniques. VSANs also can be easily managed across the fabric. Topology map highlighting is provided to help administrators explore current and proposed configuration changes for VSANs and zones.
Switch-Level Configuration
Element management is simplified with multiple views of the switch and comprehensive access to CLI configuration commands. Cisco Fabric Manager presents a realistic, graphical representation of the switch chassis, fans, power supplies, supervisor fabric modules, and switching modules. It provides status at a glance and intuitive access to configuration dialog boxes for single, switch-oriented management tasks. An administrator can click any portion of the displayed chassis for more detailed information.
The quick-configuration wizard (Figure 7) for Cisco MDS 9000 family fabric switches reduces management complexity and provides a quickly deployed SAN environment for small- and midsized-business (SMB) applications. The wizard allows server access to storage to be activated quickly and easily in a single step, using an intuitive GUI.
Figure 7. Quick-Configuration Wizard
Port-Level Configuration
Cisco Fabric Manager provides configuration for a single port or multiple ports. One or more ports can be selected in the device view or from a tabular list of ports in the fabric view. Configurable attributes include port mode, port speed, and trunk mode. The network manager also can label the port with a user-friendly text alias. Link-aggregation support is provided for PortChannels, which can be created for up to 16 ports from any switching modules to build high-bandwidth ISLs.
Configuration Checking
Cisco Fabric Manager includes automated tools that provide configuration analysis. The fabric configuration analysis tool allows administrators to compare multiple switches to a particular switch or a saved reference configuration to identify configurations that could result in performance degradation or failures. Administrators can define test policies that determine which inconsistencies and configurations to search for and flag. More than 200 individual checks can be performed on switch and fabric parameters. The fabric configuration analysis tool also can resolve inconsistencies automatically. Users simply select one or more identified problems and click the Resolve Issues button to restore network consistency.
The Cisco Fabric Manager zone merge analyzer identifies specific configurations that would prevent a successful merge when fabrics are combined. By running the zone merge analyzer before combining fabrics, problems with active zone set naming and zone membership can be resolved proactively.
Advanced zoning analysis is available with Cisco Fabric Manager Server (FMS). Connectivity analysis of the zoning database identifies storage devices accessible by each host connection, and it also identifies which hosts can access each storage device. The multipathing analysis reports the number of active and inactive paths between hosts and storage, helping administrators quickly spot nonredundant connections before full loss of connectivity results in an application outage. The zoning discrepancies analysis identifies zoning problems that may adversely affect connectivity or security or clutter the active zones database.
Health and Performance Monitoring
Cisco Fabric Manager provides continuous health and event monitoring for the Cisco MDS 9000 Family and Nexus 5000 Family switches using SNMP traps and device polling. New devices are added automatically to the topology map, and changes adversely affecting existing devices and interconnects are clearly highlighted, allowing problems to be located with ease. Fabric events are filtered to eliminate redundant log entries. Color-coding and sorting capabilities further enhance accessibility of crucial event log information.
Real-Time Performance Monitoring
Cisco Fabric Manager includes real-time network statistics collection with flexible display options. Summary views of statistics that can be navigated to reveal details allow easy identification of out-of-range values. Information is presented in tabular or graphical format, with bar, line, area, and pie chart options for any combination of parameters in a table. The graphs can be scaled and changed to different formats in seconds.
Historical Performance Monitoring
Performance statistics for ISLs, host and storage device connections, and traffic between specific Fibre Channel sources and destinations (flows) are monitored continuously. Reports and graphs for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly intervals are available for network hotspot analysis (Figure 8). In-context application launch of Cisco Traffic Analyzer with Fibre Channel device naming information passing provides transparent navigation to details at the SCSI I/O or Fibre Channel frame level.
Up to two different event thresholds can be set for each throughput statistic monitored by Cisco FMS. Threshold values can be set with user-specified levels or with baseline values automatically calculated from performance history. The automatic baseline feature profiles the performance and updates the thresholds hourly to help identify meaningful deviations from historical performance trends.
The Cisco Traffic Analyzer allows determination of throughput for traffic between specific Fibre Channel sources and destinations, all traffic in a particular VSAN, or all Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) traffic. Round-trip response times, SCSI I/O per second, SCSI read-versus-write traffic throughput and frame counts, SCSI session status, and management task information are provided. Additional statistics on Fibre Channel frame sizes and network management protocols also are available.
Figure 8. Performance Monitoring
Historical performance statistics can be collected and managed effortlessly. Wizards are provided to quickly select information to monitor, set up flows, and estimate performance database storage requirements. After initial setup, host and storage device selections automatically adapt to switch port changes to maintain performance history continuity. The integrated Round Robin Database (RRD) automatically maintains a constant size by aggregating information to reduce the number of discrete samples for the oldest data points; hence, manual maintenance of storage space is not required.
Event Management
Sophisticated event management configuration is another important Cisco Fabric Manager feature. Remote Monitoring (RMON) alert thresholds, event filtering, and Call Home setup provide the level of sophistication necessary for discovery and notification of problems before they become failures. Also, these alerts can be configured to report to third-party fault and alerting applications for on-call dispatching, trouble ticketing, and audit tracking.
Diagnostics
Cisco Fabric Manager includes powerful Fibre Channel network diagnostic tools that are industry firsts. The Fibre Channel traceroute and Fibre Channel ping diagnostic tools provide comprehensive connectivity analysis. Traceroute offers a powerful way to trace paths from any two points within the Fibre Channel network. Hop-by-hop latency calculations are displayed in tabular form, and switches in routes can be highlighted on the topology map, allowing quick identification of routing problems.
The integrated Fibre Channel ping tool offers multipoint connectivity analysis for thorough network connectivity testing and round-trip latency performance validation. The user-defined latency threshold feature allows flagging of out-of-range values. Storage administrators can perform periodic connectivity analysis between all endpoints and run in-depth switch-health analysis to help ensure network reliability between storage devices and application servers.
Network Security
Cisco Fabric Manager configures the extensive Cisco SAN security measures that prevent unauthorized management access and snooping, including RADIUS authentication support, SNMPv3, SSH, and RBAC. VSAN and zone management also enhance network security.
From a workstation or laptop running the Cisco Fabric Manager Java console, an administrator can connect to any Cisco MDS 9000 Family or Nexus 5000 Family switch in the enterprise using secure SNMPv3.
Enterprisewide switch security administration also is supported. User account setup, role creation, and RADIUS server-access configuration allows uniform application of secure RBAC enterprisewide, keeping unauthorized users from accessing management capabilities through the Cisco Fabric Manager or CLI.
Cisco Fabric Manager facilitates configuration and monitoring of VSANs, providing secure SAN domains by creating hardware-based isolated environments within a single SAN fabric. Zones of devices can be created within each VSAN to further segment secure domains of devices. If security needs to be changed based on time of day or other parameters, alternative zone sets can be maintained for any VSAN and activated with a single operation.
Advanced Features
Cisco Fabric Manager supports configuration of advanced features, including worldwide names, domain parameters, and name servers, so the administrator can easily monitor and configure Fibre Channel fabric services.
A server can be set up to continuously run Cisco Fabric Manager services such as discovery, health and event monitoring, and historical performance monitoring. Up to 16 Cisco Fabric Manager client-user interfaces can concurrently access the Cisco FMS.
Many Fibre Channel fabrics can be monitored by each management server, facilitating rapid access to configuration parameters and topology maps for multiple fabrics; there is no need to reopen the application to navigate to another fabric.
Roaming user profiles allow application of users' preference settings and topology map layout changes whenever the Cisco Fabric Manager user interface (client) is opened, maintaining a consistent interface regardless of which computer is used for management.
Cisco FMS proxy services help isolate private IP networks used for management from the LANs or WANs used for remote connectivity. The Cisco FMS proxy services also enhance resiliency by transporting management traffic between the Cisco Fabric Manager client and server over TCP/IP.
Specifications
System Requirements
The hardware requirements and supported software environments for the Cisco Fabric Manager clients and servers are as follows:
• Processor
– Intel Dual Core 2.6-GHz processor (FM server monitoring performance for >1000 end devices) for Windows and Linux
– Intel Pentium IV 1.4-GHz processor (minimum) for Windows and Linux
– Sun UltraSPARC 900-MHz processor (minimum) for Solaris
• Memory
– Client with local services: 256 MB (minimum)
– Server with performance manager, database, and Web server: 2 GB (minimum)
• Disk space
– Cisco Fabric Manager application: 200 MB including PostgreSQL database and log files
– Java Virtual Machine: 35 MB
– Historical performance statistics (relevant only for Cisco FMS installations)
76 KB per flow monitored
152 KB per port monitored
• Software
– Windows 2000, 2003 Server, or XP; Solaris 8 or 10; or Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 operating system
– VMWare, Citrix, Microsoft Terminal Server, and Virtual Network Computing (VNC)
– Java Virtual Machine Version 1.50
– TCP/IP software stack
• Web browser
– Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later
– Firefox 2.0 or later
Protocols
Cisco Fabric Manager uses the following standard protocols:
• SNMP Versions 1, 2c, and 3
• HTTP and HTTPS
• Remote Method Invocation (RMI)
• SSH and Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)
Ordering Information
The software providing device and summary views is embedded in every Cisco MDS 9000 Family and Nexus 5000 Family switches. This software is transferred from the switch and installed automatically through Java Web Start. The software providing fabric and operational views is installed from a CD included with each switch.
The standard Cisco Fabric Manager software that is included at no charge with the Cisco MDS 9000 Family and Nexus 5000 Family switches provides basic switch configuration and troubleshooting capabilities. The Cisco FMS package extends the standard Cisco Fabric Manager by providing historical performance monitoring for network traffic hotspot analysis, centralized management services, and advanced application integration. All standard Cisco Fabric Manager features and functions are fully integrated with the Cisco FMS capabilities. Table 1 compares the standard and extended Cisco FMS functions.
For additional details and ordering information, refer to the Cisco FMS package fact sheet at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/ps4159/ps4358/products_data_sheets_list.html.
Table 1. Cisco Fabric Manager Feature Comparison