Monitoring the Fibre Channel Switch

eG Enterprise provides a specialized Fibre Channel Switch monitoring model that periodically monitors the state of the critical switch components and the load on the switch, so as to proactively alert administrators to unexpected state changes or a sudden/steady increase in the load to the switch.

Figure 1 : Layer model of the Fibre Channel switch

Each layer of Figure 1 is mapped to a series of tests that report a wealth of performance data that reveal the health of the fibre channel switch. Using these tests, you can accurately figure out the following:

• Are all critical sensors of the switch in good health? Has any sensor failed? If so, which one is it?
• Is the switch available over the network?
• Are all the network interfaces supported by the switch using bandwidth optimally?
• Is any network interface operating at an abnormal speed?
• Which connection units are currently offline?
• Are there any unused connection units on the switch?
• How is the load on the ports? Is any port overloaded?
• Are all ports in the 'ready' state? Has any port failed?
• Are there 'invalid' ports on the switch?
• Has any port experienced a hardware failure?
• Is any port operating slowly?
• Is any port experiencing too many errors?
• Are link failures/invalid transmissions high on any port?
• Has any port encountered a signal loss/synchronization loss? Is it owing to a poor physical link?