Planning for Brocade switches and fabrics

Supported switches and fabrics

For a complete list of the switches that are supported, see https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6465529.

Requirements for monitoring

To connect to Brocade switches and collect metadata, you must meet the following requirements:

Connection credentials

To add Brocade switches and fabrics, you must provide the username and password of a user or admin account with chassis-role permission so that IBM Storage Insights can collect and analyze the following metadata:

• Performance metadata
• Asset, configuration, and status metadata

Tip: To help IBM Support troubleshoot data collection, performance, and other issues, create a dedicated user account for collecting metadata from switches. When the switches are added, you can also provide location information for the switches.

Ports

To connect to and collect metadata about Brocade switches and fabrics, the following ports are used:

• 22 for SSH
• 80 for HTTP
• 443 for HTTPS

Important: The data collector that is assigned to a Brocade switch must have SSH access on port 22 to collect metadata. In environments with multiple data collectors, a data collector without SSH access on port 22 might be assigned to a switch when it's being added for monitoring. In that case, adding the switch will fail, even if other data collectors have SSH access on port 22.

To help resolve the problem, enable SSH access on port 22 to the switch on all your data collectors. Then, try to add the switch again.

Requirements for collecting switch and fabric events

To show the events in IBM Storage Insights that are reported for the switches and fabrics, MAPS must be activated with a Fabrics Vision license. The active policy for the switch must be set to a policy other than the default active policy, which is dflt_base_policy.