Cisco Systems MDS 9000 Configuring the Cisco Fabric Analyzer

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Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fabric Manager Configuration Guide

OL-6965-03, Cisco MDS SAN-OS Release 2.x

Chapter 35 Troubleshooting Your Fabric

Configuring a Fabric Analyzer

RPCAP supports two setup connection modes based on firewall restrictions.

•Passive mode (default)—The configured host initiates connection to the switch. Multiple hosts can

be configured to be in passive mode and multiple hosts can be connected and receive remote captures

at the same time.

•Active mode—The switch initiates the connection to a configured host—one host at a time.

Using capture filters, you can limit the amount of traffic that is actually sent to the client. Capture filters

are specified at the client end—on Ethereal, not on the switch.

The Ethereal software runs on a host, such as a PC or workstation, and communicates with the remote

capture daemon. This software is available in the public domain from http://www.ethereal.com. The

Ethereal GUI front-end supports a rich interface such as a colorized display, graphical assists in defining

filters, and specific frame searches. These features are documented on Ethereal’s website.

While remote capture through Ethereal supports capturing and decoding Fibre Channel frames from a

Cisco MDS 9000 Family switch, the host running Ethereal does not require a Fibre Channel connection

to the switch. The remote capture daemon running on the switch sends the captured frames over the

out-of-band Ethernet management port. This capability allows you to capture and decode Fibre Channel

frames from your desktop or laptop.

Configuring the Cisco Fabric Analyzer

You can configure the Cisco Fabric Analyzer to perform one of two captures.

•Local capture—The command setting to enable a local capture cannot be saved to persistent storage

or synchronized to standby. Launches the textual version on the fabric analyzer directly on the

console screen. The capture can also be saved on the local file system.

•Remote capture—The command setting to enable a remote capture can be saved to persistent

storage. It can be synchronized to the standby supervisor module and a stateless restart can be

issued, if required.

To use the Cisco Fabric Analyzer feature, traffic should be flowing to or from the supervisor module.

Caution You must use the eth2 interface to capture control traffic on a supervisor module.

To capture remote traffic, use one of the following options:

•The capture interface can be specified in Ethereal as the remote device:

rpcap://<ipaddress or switch hostname>/eth2

For example:

rpcap://cp-16/eth2

rpcap://17.2.1.1/eth2