Fabrics

Use the Fabrics page to administer and monitor the configuration and status information that is collected about the fabrics in your storage environment.

IBM Storage Insights subscribers: If you're currently using the free version of IBM Storage Insights, some of the columns that are listed might not be available. Also, you must have a data collector that is deployed and connected to view information, such as configuration and status information.

Information about fabrics

A fabric is a network of hubs, switches, adapter endpoints, and connecting cables that support a communication protocol between devices.

You can exploit the metadata that is collected by adding or editing property values. When you see this icon Edit icon , it means that you can add or edit this value. Just right-click the resource, and click View Properties. You can use, for example, name and location properties in filters to refine the information in the reports that you create. When you define location information, IBM® Support can investigate metadata collection issues more efficiently.

More detailed information than that provided in the hover help text is provided here for the following columns:

Acknowledged: The issue causing the condition of the fabric to be Error or Warning was acknowledged by the user.
Active Zone Set: The name of the zone set that is active in the collection of zone sets for the fabric.
Condition: The overall condition of the fabric is determined by the most critical status of any one of the fabric's internal resources.
Connected Switch Ports: The number of switch ports that are online and connected.
Custom tag 1, 2, and 3: The user-defined text that you can add to provide more information about the fabric and include in the reports you create about your fabrics.
Fabric Type: The vendor of the switches in the fabric.
Links: The number of inter-switch links (ISLs) on the switch. An ISL is a single link between two ports on two different switches. An ISL is a member of a trunk that consists of all ISLs between two switches.
Location: The location of the fabric, which can be defined by editing the properties for a fabric.
Name: The name of the fabric from the switch. If no fabric name is set on the switch it is the worldwide name (WWN).
NPV Switches: The number of switches that forward FC service requests to uplink switches. In Brocade fabrics, these switches are enabled in Access Gateway mode.
Principal Switch of Fabric: The name of the principal switch in the fabric. The fabric can change its principal switch dynamically.
Switch Ports: The total number of switch ports, which includes the number of switch ports that are online and connected to other ports, and the number of switch ports that are not online.
Switches: The number of switches in the fabric.
WWN: The worldwide name (WWN) of the fabric, which is a 64-bit, unsigned name identifier that is unique.