Cisco Systems MDS 9000 Network Fabric Discovery, Modifying Device Grouping

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Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fabric Manager Configuration Guide

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

Chapter 3 Fabric Manager Client

Network Fabric Discovery

Cisco Fabric Manager collects information on the fabric topology through SNMP queries to the switches

connected to Fabric Manager. The switch replies after having discovered all devices connected to the

fabric by using the information coming from its FSPF technology database and the Name Server

database, and collected using the Fabric Configuration Server’s request/response mechanisms defined

by the FC-GS-3/4 standard. When you start the Fabric Manager, you enter the IP address (or host name)

of a “seed” switch for discovery.

After you start Fabric Manager and discovery completes, Fabric Manager presents you with a view of

your network fabric, including all discovered switches, hosts, and storage devices.

Modifying Device Grouping

Because not all devices are capable of responding to FC-GS-3 requests, different ports of a single server

or storage subsystem may be displayed as individual end devices on the Fabric Manager map. Fabric

Manager Release 2.1(2a) auto-creates enclosures based on the OUI and vendor name for the devices.

Note Two devices in isolated fabrics with the same alias name may cause Fabric Manager to link the two

devices in the same enclosure and show the isolated fabrics as linked. Turn off auto-creation or manually

modify the enclosure to create unique names in each fabric to show the fabrics as isolated in Fabric

Manager.

To turn off auto-creation, edit the server.properties file to set fabric.autoAlias to false and then restart

Fabric Manager Server.

To manually group end devices in a single enclosure to have them represented by a single icon on the

map, follow these steps:

Step 1 Select Storage or Hosts from the Fabric Manager’s Physical tree in the Navigation pane.

You see the end devices displayed in the Information pane.

Step 2 Click one of the devices or the Name field that you want to be in the enclosure.

Step 3 Enter a name to identify the new enclosure’s icon on the Fabric Manager Fabric pane.

Step 4 Click once on the Name field for that device. To select more than one name, hold down the Shift key and

click each of the other names.

Step 5 Press Ctrl-C to copy the selected name(s).

Step 6 Press Ctrl-V to paste the name into the Name field for that device.

Note To remove devices from an enclosure, triple click on the name of the device and press Delete.

To remove an enclosure, repeat this step for each device in the enclosure.