Brocade Network Advisor SAN + IP User Manual v12.1.0 - Manual (Page 1626)

1580 Brocade Network Advisor SAN + IP User Manual
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Overview
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Why Flow Vision exists
As storage networks become larger and more complicated, storage administrators need methods
to analyze flows (and dynamic nature of the network) so that they can obtain benefits such as the
following:
• Instant identification of the source of performance or other problems. For example, is the
problem in an application, SAN, or in storage.
• Tools for pre-deployment verification
- Hardware component verification - verifying there are no link-level or SFP transceiver
issues.
- Connectivity validation - verifying ASIC blocks such as routing, zoning, and traffic isolation
(TI) zoning.
- Performance verification - verifying link bandwidth and other features.
• Real-time performance and frame monitoring in the SAN.
• Network dynamics (for example, ISL failure).
• Application performance optimization.
Fabric Vision components
Table 146 describes the Fabric Vision components.:
Flow Vision licensing
To access Flow Vision, the Fabric Vision (FV) license or both the Fabric Watch (FW) and the
Advanced Performance Monitor (APM) licenses must be installed on the hardware platform. Refer
to
Chapter 2, “Licenses” for more information on using licenses.
TABLE 146 Fabric Vision components
Component Description
Flow Vision Provides:
• Flow-related data for traffic analysis to various applications
• Interfaces to manage flows with flexible parameters for traffic-related applications
• Infrastructure to host applications related to traffic functionality
• Flow configuration management
Monitoring and Alerting
Policy Suite (MAPS) Responsible for monitoring critical components including port error statistics, traffic
analysis, critical resource usage, switch health monitoring, FRU states, and so on.
Flow Vision provides data related to flows for traffic analysis in MAPS.
For more information on using MAPs, refer to
Chapter 50, “Monitoring and Alerting Policy
Suite” .
Fabric OS applications Provides interfaces to Fabric OS applications, specifically diagnostic tools (for example,
super ping), allowing you to manage hosted traffic and connectivity applications in
Flow Vision for detailed analysis.
Platform services These populate and update the data in the system database hierarchy.
Switch services These receive system-related events and interact with hardware.