Adding fabrics and switches

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Add fabrics and switches for monitoring.

Before you begin

When you add switches for monitoring, you must provide a user name and password for logging in to those switches. The role or user group of the user determines the type of data that can be collected. To see the privileges that are required for switch users, see Required user roles for monitoring resources.

For a Cisco switch to successfully receive and respond to queries from IBM Spectrum Control, the following basic requirements must be met:
  • IBM Spectrum Control can use SNMPv3 (preferred) or SNMPv1 to probe switches and fabrics. The SNMPv3 protocol is preferred because it provides better security, but switches that use the SNMPv1 protocol are also supported. Some switches are configured to use SNMPv3 by default.
  • The Fibre Alliance FC Management MIB (FA MIB) and Fibre Channel Fabric Element MIB (FE MIB) must be enabled on the switch.
  • When you use the SNMPv1 protocol, the community string that is configured in IBM Spectrum Control must match one of the community strings that are configured on the switch with read access. Additionally, Cisco switches must have a community string match for write access. The default community strings in IBM Spectrum Control are public for read access and private for write access. Other community strings can be defined on the switches, but are not used. Community strings are not relevant when you use the SNMPv3 protocol.
  • SNMP access control lists must include the IBM Spectrum Control system. These access control lists are defined and configured on the switches. Some lists automatically include all hosts, while others exclude all by default.
  • The Fibre Channel (FC) or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocols must be enabled on the switch. Some switches, such as the Cisco Nexus 5000 series, require you to enable these protocols. Otherwise, IBM Spectrum Control does not recognize the switch when you try to add it using the Add Switches and Fabrics for Monitoring dialog. For instructions on how to configure Cisco switches for FCoE enablement, go to the Cisco product website at http://www.cisco.com and click Support.
IBM Spectrum Control can monitor Brocade switches and fabrics in either of the following ways:
  • Use the REST API to manage the switches and fabrics.
  • Use the Brocade Network Advisor (BNA) Storage Management Initiative (SMI) agent to manage the switches and fabrics. The SMI agent is embedded in the BNA. BNA can manage multiple fabrics within and across data centers. When you configure BNA, you set up one switch to be the seed switch that interconnects to all the other switches in the fabric.
    Important: The embedded SMI agent is only available in the Professional Plus and Enterprise editions of BNA. BNA is no longer available for purchase, although it will be supported by Broadcom until February 2022. For more information about end of support for BNA, see https://www.broadcom.com/support/fibre-channel-networking/eol.

About this task

In IBM Spectrum Control, you can add switches and fabrics for monitoring at the same time. You can add the following types of switches:
  • Brocade
  • Cisco

For a complete list of the firmware levels of supported switches, see External link icon https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6249365.

Procedure

  1. From the Network menu, click Switches or Fabrics.
  2. Click Add Switch or Add Fabric.
  3. Select the vendor: Brocade or Cisco.
  4. Specify how you want to discover the switches and the fabrics that are connected to the switches. For Brocade switches and fabrics, you can connect using either REST API or an SMI-S provider on Brocade Network Advisor (BNA). For Cisco switches and fabrics, you must use SNMP agents.
    Type of switch Steps
    Brocade Complete the following steps:
    1. Select the version of the Fabric OS that is running on the switches.
    2. If you select 8.2.1 or later, specify the connection details and the authentication credentials for the switches that you want to add. You need to add only one switch from each fabric to IBM Spectrum Control. If other switches that are on the same fabric are running Fabric OS 8.2.1 or later and have the same username, password, protocol, and port, they are added to IBM Spectrum Control automatically.

      The user must have a user or admin account with chassis-role privileges for the switches that are added.

      Click Next.

    3. If you select Earlier than 8.2.1, make sure that the switch that you want to add is monitored by BNA. BNA is required for monitoring Brocade switches with Fabric OS versions earlier than 8.2.1. Click Next, then specify the connection details and the authentication credentials for the BNA SMI agent that you want to add. You can close the window and continue your work. To change the default probes and performance monitors, keep the window open and update them when the switches are connected.
    Cisco To enable the collection of data with SNMP agents, complete the following steps:
    1. Specify the version of SNMP: v3 (preferred) or v1.
    2. If you choose to use v3, specify the User name and associated Authentication password. Select an Authentication protocol and an Encryption protocol.
    3. If you choose to use v1, define the Read community and the Write community.
    4. Identify the Host name or IP address of each switch that you want to add.
    5. Click Next. You can close the window and continue your work. To change the default probes and performance monitors, keep the window open and update them when the switches are connected.
  5. Specify the display name and location of the switches and fabrics that are discovered.

Results

The discovered switches are automatically added for monitoring, if they have the same credentials as the switches that you added. A probe is automatically run to collect status and asset information about the resources.

When Brocade switches are added, other switches in the same fabric that do not have the same authentication credentials might also be discovered. These switches are not added for monitoring. They are added to the Switches page with a Not Monitored condition.

What to do next

When the collection of data is complete, you can view status information about the fabric or switch on the Fabrics page or Switches page.

If you want to monitor multiple switches that have Not Monitored status, you must add them with the correct credentials. To add a list of Not Monitored switches, add the IP Address column to the Switches page. Then, select Condition as the filter, and Not Monitored as the filter value. Review the switches and gather the IP addresses of the switches that you want to add for monitoring. Then, add the switches in the usual way.

Managing alert conditions and notification settings:
  • Review the alert configuration for the fabric or switch. If you configured data collection for the switches or fabric, they are automatically added to the default alert policy for their type.

    You can change which alert policy manages a switch, and you can also set a switch to not be managed by any policy. For example, to change the alert policy for a switch, go to Settings > Alert Policies and click the Resources by Policy tab. Click Switches, select a switch, and then select Actions > Set Policy.

  • To measure performance of inter-switch connections, you must collect performance metadata about the inter-switch links (ISLs) for both switches involved in the connection. When you define performance alerts for inter-switch connections, the performance for all the ISLs in the trunk are aggregated and compared to the threshold value. To determine if a single ISL exceeds a threshold, define an alert for switch port performance.

    You can alert only on the performance of ISL connection types. Performance metadata is not collected for the other types of inter-switch connections, such as ISL Trunks.

Restriction: If you don't configure data collection for the switches and fabric, they are not added to the default alert policy.