Brocade Fabric OS Administrators Guide (Supporting Fabric OS v7.3.0) User Manual
Page 502
NOTE
Initial stabilization is the time taken by a flow to reach the maximum bandwidth. This time varies
depending on the number of flows in the fabric and other factors. This time can be up to 14 seconds in
the Backbones, and up to 82 seconds in the fixed-port switches.
Applications can use Top Talker monitors data to do the following:
• Re-route the traffic through different ports that are less busy, so as not to overload a given port.
• Alert you to the major users of bandwidth (top talking flows) on a port if the total traffic on the port
exceeds the acceptable bandwidth consumption.
You can use Top Talker monitors to identify the SID and DID pairs that consume the most bandwidth
and can then configure them with certain Quality of Service (QoS) attributes so they get proper priority.
Refer to
on page 375 for information on QoS.
The Top Talker monitors are based on SID and DID pairs and not WWNs. Once Top Talker monitors
are installed on a switch or port, they remains installed across power cycles.
Top Talker monitors support two modes, port mode and fabric mode:
• Port mode Top Talker monitor
A Top Talker monitor can be installed on a port to measure the traffic originating from the port and
flowing to different destinations.
You can configure Top Talker monitors on F_Ports and, depending on the switch model, on E_Ports.
The following platforms support Top Talker monitors on E_Ports:
• Brocade 6505
• Brocade 6510
• Brocade 6520
• Brocade M6505
• Brocade 6547
• Brocade DCX 8510 family
In fabric mode, Top Talker monitors are installed on all E_Ports in the fabric and measure the data
rate of all the possible flows in the fabric (ingress E_Port traffic only). In fabric mode, Top Talker
monitors can determine the top n bandwidth users on a given switch.
You can install Top Talker monitors in either port mode or fabric mode, but not both.
ATTENTION
A fabric mode Top Talker monitor and an EE monitor cannot be configured on the same fabric. You
must delete the EE monitor before you configure the fabric mode Top Talker monitor.
How do Top Talker monitors differ from EE monitors? EE monitors provide counter statistics for
traffic flowing between a given SID and DID pair. Top Talker monitors identify all possible SID and DID
flow combinations that are possible on a given port and provide a sorted output of the top talking flows.
Also, if the number of flows exceeds the hardware resources, existing EE monitors fail to get real-time
data for all of them; however, Top Talker monitors can monitor all flows for a given E_Port or F_Port.
Virtual Fabric considerations: All logical switches in the same chassis can use either fabric mode
Top Talker monitors or port mode Top Talker monitors and EE monitors. You cannot use fabric mode
Top Talker monitors and EE monitors together on the same logical switch.
Admin Domain considerations: Top Talker monitors are always installed in AD255.
NPIV considerations: Top Talker monitors take NPIV devices into consideration when calculating the
top talking flows.
Monitoring Fabric Performance
502
Fabric OS Administrators Guide
53-1003130-01