Filter
Top Products
Send documentation comments to mdsfeedback-doc@cisco.com.
35-9
Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fabric Manager Configuration Guide
OL-6965-03, Cisco MDS SAN-OS Release 2.x
Chapter 35 Troubleshooting Your Fabric
Configuring a Fabric Analyzer
RPCAP supports two setup connection modes based on firewall restrictions.
• Passive mode (default)—The configured host initiates connection to the switch. Multiple hosts can
be configured to be in passive mode and multiple hosts can be connected and receive remote captures
at the same time.
• Active mode—The switch initiates the connection to a configured host—one host at a time.
Using capture filters, you can limit the amount of traffic that is actually sent to the client. Capture filters
are specified at the client end—on Ethereal, not on the switch.
GUI-Based Client
The Ethereal software runs on a host, such as a PC or workstation, and communicates with the remote
capture daemon. This software is available in the public domain from http://www.ethereal.com. The
Ethereal GUI front-end supports a rich interface such as a colorized display, graphical assists in defining
filters, and specific frame searches. These features are documented on Ethereal’s website.
While remote capture through Ethereal supports capturing and decoding Fibre Channel frames from a
Cisco MDS 9000 Family switch, the host running Ethereal does not require a Fibre Channel connection
to the switch. The remote capture daemon running on the switch sends the captured frames over the
out-of-band Ethernet management port. This capability allows you to capture and decode Fibre Channel
frames from your desktop or laptop.
Configuring the Cisco Fabric Analyzer
You can configure the Cisco Fabric Analyzer to perform one of two captures.
• Local capture—The command setting to enable a local capture cannot be saved to persistent storage
or synchronized to standby. Launches the textual version on the fabric analyzer directly on the
console screen. The capture can also be saved on the local file system.
• Remote capture—The command setting to enable a remote capture can be saved to persistent
storage. It can be synchronized to the standby supervisor module and a stateless restart can be
issued, if required.
To use the Cisco Fabric Analyzer feature, traffic should be flowing to or from the supervisor module.
Sending Captures to Remote IP Addresses
Caution You must use the eth2 interface to capture control traffic on a supervisor module.
To capture remote traffic, use one of the following options:
• The capture interface can be specified in Ethereal as the remote device:
rpcap://<ipaddress or switch hostname>/eth2
For example:
rpcap://cp-16/eth2
rpcap://17.2.1.1/eth2