Tag Archives: Flow Vision

Brocade FOS version 8 and 32G hardware

Brocade 4 Comments
8-ball

If you’ve been laying low during Christmas last year and have overlooked that Brocade announced its first to market with “Gen 6” (32G) hardware and FOS code 8, you’re forgiven. FOS 8 was mainly released to support the new G620 hardware but a lot of functions and features did either not work or were not supported yet. FOS 8 also dropped support for a lot of hardware which is a good thing IMHO. 8G equipment like the DCX4S, DCX as well as the single unit switches like the 5100 and 5300 were dropped.

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1.2 Flow Vision

Config Guide No Comments

This subject will be divided in two sections.

  1. Flow Monitor and Generator
  2. Flow Mirror

In FOS 7 the concept of frame-monitoring was introduced on Condor2 and Condor3 ASICs. This allowed an administrator to create a frame template based on the FC frameheader (see here) and obtain statistics on these frames. Flow Vision is somewhat progressing on this technology and has been extended significantly. Flow Vision is a 3 way solution which requires a switch capable of providing the functionality, software licensed to be able to configure and capture flows and a tool to collect and interpret these flows. All Condor 3 based switches (16G), FOS 7.4 and up, and Brocade Network Advisor 12.4.x are needed to be able to fully utilise the base flow-vision functionality. (The Brocade AMP platform is an extension but will be discussed later.)

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Brocade Fabric Vision – Version 1

Brocade No Comments

As you may have read in my previous posts I’m not really a fan of marketing driven terminology whereby existing technology is re-branded over and over again in order to obfuscate the underlying technology and make things more complex that they really are. The FC Gen-X nonsense is one of them. With Brocade Fabric Vision it took me a while however I see where Brocade is going with this and more where it is coming from.

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