Brocade Communications Systems DCX 8510-4 manual Serviceability, Software features

Serviceability 1

Serviceability

The Brocade DCX 8510-4 provides the following features to enhance and ensure serviceability:

•Modular design with hot-swappable components.

•Flash memory that stores two firmware images per control processor.

•USB port on control processor blades for most tasks that formerly required an FTP/SCP server, including software and firmware upgrades.

•Nonvolatile random-access memory (NVRAM), containing the OEM serial number, Brocade serial number, revision information, and part number information.

•Background health-check daemon.

•Memory scrubber, self test, and bus ping to determine if a bus is not functioning.

•RASlog messages.

•SMI-S compliant.

•Hardware and software watchdog timers.

•Status LEDs.

•Predictive diagnostics analysis through Fabric Watch.

•SNMP (including version 3) integration with higher-layer managers.

•Cable management using vertical finger assemblies to accommodate the horizontal orientation of the blades.

Software features

The Fabric OS allows any Fibre Channel-compliant device to attach to the switches as long as it conforms to the device login, name service, and related Fibre Channel standards. Each operating environment requires that a Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA) be available with a standards-compliant driver for correct interface to the fabric.

Fabric OS consists of a set of embedded applications running on top of an embedded Linux operating system kernel. Some of these applications include:

•Name server

•Alias server

•Zone server

•Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agent

•SMI-S compliant API

•Syslog auditing

•RCS (Reliable Commit Service)

•NTP

•Tasks to manage address assignment, routing, link initialization, fabric initialization, link shutdown, Brocade DCX 8510-4 shutdown, and the user interface

Brocade DCX 8510-4 Backbone Hardware Reference Manual	9
53-1002177-05