eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by UCSFIConnsFCPTest

The Cisco UCS fabric interconnect includes the following key Fibre Channel (FC) port types:

  • Uplink FC Ports: Uplink Fibre Channel ports handle FCoE traffic between the fabric interconnect and the next layer of the network. All network-bound FCoE traffic is pinned to one of these ports. If one/more of these ports are not operable or a traffic congestion occurs on any of these ports, then, significant latencies can be noticed in the FCoE communication between the corresponding interconnect and the network. To avoid this, you need to constantly observe the operational status, overall health, and the traffic flowing to and from each of the FC ports on every fabric interconnect, spot abnormalities quickly, and fix them before it is too late. This test enables you to do just that.

  • Storage FC Ports: The Storage FC Port type allows for the direct attachment of a FC storage device to one of the native FC ports on the Fabric Interconnect expansion modules. Like the FCoE Storage Port type, the FC frames arriving on these ports are expected to be un-tagged - so no connection to an MDS FC switch, etc. Each Storage FC Port is assigned a VSAN number to keep the traffic separated within the UCS Unified Fabric. When used in this way, the Fabric Interconnect is not providing any FC zoning configuration capabilities - all devices within a particular VSAN will be allowed, at least at the FC switching layer (FC2), to communicate with each other.

In addition, the fabric interconnect supports Monitoring FC Ports, and FC ports that have not yet been configured to perform any function and are hence still UnConfigured FC Ports.

This test runs frequent health checks on each of the FC ports in every fabric interconnect, and turns the spotlight on overloaded ports, non-operational ports, and ports that are operating at a slow pace.

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
AdminState Indicates the current administrative status of this FC port in this fabric interconnect.   This measure reports either Enabled or Disabled as the administrative status of an FC port. The states and their corresponding numeric equivalents are shown in the table below:

Numeric Value State
1 Enabled
2 Disabled

Note:

By default, this measure reports the above-mentioned States while indicating the administrative status of an FC port. However, the graph of this measure will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents of the states i.e., 1 or 2.
OperState Indicates the overall status of this FC port in this fabric interconnect.   The States reported by this measure and their corresponding numeric equivalents are described in the table below:

Numeric Value State
0 Indeterminate
1 Up
2 Admin-down
3 Link-down
4 Failed
5 No-license
6 Link-up
7 Hardware-failure
8 Software-failure
9 Error-disabled
10 Sfp-not-present

Note:

By default, this measure reports the above-mentioned States while indicating the overall status of an FC port. However, the graph of this measure will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents of the states i.e., 0 to 10.

The detailed diagnosis of this measure provides the Time, ID, Slot ID, Port Type, Network Type, Transport Type, WWPN and Mode attributes for each Fabric Interconnects FC ports.
OperSpeed Indicates the current operating speed of this FC port in this fabric interconnect.   The values reported by this measure and their corresponding numeric equivalents are described in the table below:

Numeric Value State
0 Indeterminate
1 1Gbps
2 2Gbps
3 4Gbps
4 8Gbps

Note:

By default, this measure reports the above-mentioned States while indicating the operating speed of the Fabric Interconnect FC ports. However, the graph of this measure will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents of the states i.e., 0 to 4.
DataRx Indicates the amount of data received by this FC port during the last measurement period. MB Compare the value of these measures across all FC ports to determine which port is handling the maximum data traffic.
DataTx Indicates the amount of data sent by this FC port during the last measurement period. MB
PacketsRx Indicates the number of packets received by this FC port during the last measurement period. Packets Compare the value of these measures across all FC ports to determine which port is handling the maximum packet traffic.
PacketsTx Indicates the number of packets transmitted by this FC port during the last measurement period. Packets
CrcRx Indicates the number of Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) errors that occurred during data trafficking in this FC port, during the last measurement period. Errors CRC or Cyclic Redundancy Check is a process that helps in identifying any errors that might occur during the data transmission process. Data is usually transmitted in small blocks, and a CRC value is assigned to each block and transmitted along with it. This CRC value is verified at the destination to ensure that it matches the CRC value transmitted from the source. A CRC error occurs when the two values (source and destination) do not match and the test fails. The main benefit of CRC is that it helps you ensure that data you have received or downloaded is not damaged or corrupt.

By comparing the value of this measure across all FC ports, you can accurately identify most error-prone FC port.
ErrorRx Indicates the total number of errors transmitted by this FC port during the last measurement period. Errors  
ErrorTx Indicates the total number of errors transmitted through the Fabric Interconnect FC ports during the last measurement period. Errors  
DiscardRx Indicates the total amount of data that was discarded during reception of data by this FC port since the last measurement period. Errors  
DiscardTx Indicates the total amount of data that was discarded during data transmission through this FC port since the last measurement period. Errors  
TooLongRx Indicates the total number of errors that occurred when data of a large size was received by this FC port during the last measurement period. Errors Ideally, the value of this measure should be low. A high value is indicative of many errors during data reception. To identify the most error-prone port, compare the value of this measure across FC ports.
TooShortRx Indicates the total number of errors that occurred due to truncated or corrupt data received by this FC port during the last measurement period. Errors Ideally, the value of this measure should be low. A high value is indicative of many errors during data transmission. To identify the most error-prone port, compare the value of this measure across FC ports.
SignalLosses Indicates the signal losses that occurred on this FC port during data transmission and reception in the last measurement period. Errors Ideally, the value of this measure should be 0.
SynchLosses Indicates the losses that occurred due to synchronization of this FC port with other components during the last measurement period. Errors Ideally, the value of this measure should be 0.
LinkFailures Indicates the link failures that occurred between this FC port blade server chassis during the last measurement period. Errors Ideally, the value of this measure should be 0.