Support for Access Gateway switches and virtual fabrics

IBM Spectrum® Control can monitor Brocade Access Gateway switches and virtual fabrics.

Support for Brocade Access Gateway switches

IBM Spectrum Control discovers and monitors Brocade Access Gateway switches, also called N_Port Virtualizer (NPV) switches. These switches are not probed as part of the fabric. Each Brocade Access Gateway switch has a separate probe job defined. The probe collects the following information:
  • The switch properties.
  • The ports of the switch.
  • The connections to these switch ports.

Support for Brocade virtual fabrics

You can monitor Brocade virtual fabrics, with some limitations. To monitor Brocade virtual fabrics, you can:
  • Discover Brocade virtual fabrics and switches.
  • Schedule probes to collect asset and status data about Brocade virtual fabrics.
  • Schedule monitors to collect information about the performance of Brocade virtual switches.
When you add and collect information about Brocade virtual fabrics, you can:
  • See the properties of Brocade virtual fabrics and switches and the resources that are connected to them. The virtual fabrics and switches are displayed as if they are physical fabrics and switches.
  • Control zones for virtual fabrics. Zones are created during storage provisioning.
The following limitations apply to the support for Brocade virtual fabrics that use Brocade Network Advisor (BNA):
  • If Brocade switches are partitioned into virtual fabrics, the virtual fabrics and switches are displayed in the IBM Spectrum Control GUI, but the physical fabrics and physical switches are not displayed.
  • The virtual fabrics and switches are displayed as if they are physical fabrics and switches. Therefore, you cannot see which virtual fabrics are on the same physical fabric, and you cannot see which virtual switches are on the same physical switch.
  • In the IBM Spectrum Control GUI and in Cognos® Analytics reports, the Brocade virtual fabrics and switches are incorrectly identified as physical fabrics and switches.

There might be significant limitations on managing fabrics, depending on the version of BNA that you are running. Check the IBM Spectrum Control interoperability matrix for switches for information about the switches that are supported by IBM Spectrum Control, and any limitations that you need to know about when you use BNA.