Brocade FibreChannel Switch Port Monitoring

[Ashok Reddy]

Hi,

We have monitoring in place for Brocade Fibre Channel ports.

Details:
Fibre Channel Ports for Brocade -Fibre Channel Switch OS version 8.2.1c, System Model 40-1000737-04 where the Exact metric is : swFCPortPhyState which translates to Physical Status in UIM

We have configured UIM such that the above metric "swFCPortPhyState" or "Physical Status in UIM" is monitored and alerts are generated whenever the value of the metric is not '6'. As per the attached screenshots, it can be seen that the ideal value for the metric when the device is functional is 6. So, we are generating alerts whenever the metric value is different from 6.

However, with this configuration we see that a lot of unwanted alerts are generated because value '4' for this metric is not concerning for our Storage team as the device is indeed not receiving any traffic and they are fine with this status of the device and don't want these alerts.

The requirement now is: can we generate an alert whenever there's a change in the current status of these FibreChannel Ports rather than monitoring for a particular value of this metric? We want to know if there's a deviation from the existing state and alert to be generated whenever there's a deviation.

Please help.

Thanks & Regards,
Ashok

[Gene Howard]

What are you currently monitoring this with?
Is there some reason not to just set up an exclude rule for the alarm in NAS where the value is 4?
I do not know of any SNMP probe that will send an alarm based on state change that is not tied to a value.

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Gene Howard
Principal Support Engineer
Broadcom
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[David Michel]

the easy way is as Gene mentions with nas. The harder way is to setup a template filter such that if the state = 4 the template setting is applied and qos and alarms are disabled, and that would have to be tested to ensure it works as expected when the state changes to 4 and back again.

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Support Engineer
Broadcom
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[Ashok Reddy]

Hi Gene,

Thank you for your response on this. I can certainly avoid the alarm altogether if I want to. However, as per my storage team, the value 4 for the metric which means "no light" on that port is not always a concern. At times, it is of grave concern and they want to be notified. 

The value of 4 can mean that there's no device connected on that port, and it can also mean that there is a device connected on that port but that device is not powered on.

My storage team wants to know when there's a device that gets powered off and results in a value of 4,no light, for this metric. So, we do want to be alerted for 4.

As of now, all the alarms we have are of the situation where there's no device connected on that port and hence 'no light' or value 4. So, our storage team wants alarms only when there's a change in status quo. I hope it is clear now.

Thanks & Regards,
Ashok

[Gene Howard]

As there is no way to define what is the status quo in UIM, I would say this is not possible and you would need to open an enhancement request.

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Gene Howard
Principal Support Engineer
Broadcom
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