Tag Archives: flow

1.2 Flow Vision

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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8 – Quality of Service

Historically the need to segregate fibre-channel traffic and have the option to prioritize frames and flows has not been high on design agenda of most of the companies I had under my eyes. Most often if the need is there to differentiate between different levels of importance between the various business applications you’ll very often see that additional equipment is purchased and the topologies are adjusted as needed. This obviously works well however when the ratio of capex vs opex is out of balance but the business is still retaining the need for your applications to be separated in order of criticality, you need to consider other options. As in the IP networking world Fibre-Channel has a similar functionality which has been in the FC standards for a long time but only recently has been introduced by some vendors.

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