Introduction to Cisco Fabric Manager

Brief introduction

Cisco Fabric Manager is a web-based, easy-to-use, responsive application that enables switch and network management in an integrated way, simplifying the management of the Cisco MDS 9000 series switches in the storage Area network (SAN). Cisco Fabric Manager provides network-level management capabilities for storage administrators, including identification, multiple-switch configuration, continuous network monitoring, and troubleshooting. This powerful method can greatly shorten the setup time of the switch, improve the reliability of the whole network, and provide a wealth of diagnostic information to help solve network problems and configuration inconsistencies.

With the intuitive graphical interface of Cisco Fabric Manager, storage administrators can compare switch configurations, configure policy checks on the Cisco MDS 9000 series switches, set thresholds for reporting Third-party error management applications, and view the statistics and overall statistics for a single device in real time , as well as analysis of historical statistical data. All of these functions can be performed in a secure interface and can be managed remotely from any location.

Features of Cisco Fabric Manager

• Java application for embedded switches-integrates switches and network management into one of the performance tuning tools that are supplied with each Cisco MDS 9000 series switch.

• Matrix visualization-Performs centralized automatic recognition and displays the storage network topology, connectivity, and regional/virtual storage Area Network (VSAN) key annotations, enabling people to quickly understand network conditions and discover configuration issues.

• Multiple views, including matrices, devices, and summaries-simplifies configuration and monitoring of multiple switches and supports configuration replication.

• Fully configured multiple switches-provides integrated networking, switch and port-level configuration, simplifies zone, VSAN, IP Fibre Channel (FCIP), Small computer system interface (ISCSI), IBM Fibre Optic Connectivity (FICON), and Smart service configuration.

• Flexible monitoring and alerting-displays real-time and historical performance monitoring statistics in tabular and graphical format, and the configuration of thresholds based alerts, including Call home, facilitates quick response by the person concerned to the exception.

• Historical performance monitoring-provides tabular and graphical reports showing the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly traffic between inter-switch links (ISL), host and storage connections, and between certain fibre Channel source and target sites. The first 10 reports and daily summary reports that provide network-level statistics can greatly simplify network hotspot analysis.

• Powerful configuration analysis-performs zone consolidation analysis and configuration checking, simplifies problem resolution processes, facilitates successful consolidation of networks, and resolves configuration inconsistencies automatically.

• Network Diagnostics-Use fibre Channel ping and traceroute to detect network and switch operations, allowing administrators to quickly discover network connectivity and performance issues.

• Comprehensive security-use of the Simple Network Management Protocol version 3rd (SNMP v3), Secure Shell Protocol (SSH), and role-based access control (RBAC) to prevent unauthorized management access.