Chapter 30
Monitoring Network Traffic Using SPAN
SD Port Characteristics
An SD port has the following characteristics:
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Guidelines to Configure SPAN
The following guidelines apply for a SPAN configuration:
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Monitoring Traffic Using Fibre Channel Analyzers
You can use SPAN to monitor traffic on an interface without any traffic disruption. This feature is
specially useful in troubleshooting scenarios when traffic disruption changes the problem environment
and makes it difficult to reproduce the problem.
Without SPAN
You can monitor traffic using interface fc1/1 in a Cisco MDS 9000 Family switch that is connected to
another switch or host. You need to physically connect a Fibre Channel analyzer between the switch and
the storage device to analyze the traffic through interface fc1/1 as shown in
OL-7753-01
Ignores buffer-to-buffer credits.
Allows data traffic only in the egress (tx) direction.
Does not require a device or an analyzer to be physically connected.
Supports only 1 Gbps or 2 Gbps speeds. The auto speed option is not allowed.
Multiple sessions can share the same destination ports.
If the SD port is shut down, all shared sessions stop generating SPAN traffic.
The port mode can not be changed if it is being used for a SPAN session.
If you need to change a SD-port mode to another port mode, first remove the SD port from all
sessions and then change the port mode using the switchport mode command.
The outgoing frames can be encapsulated in extended inter-switch link (EISL) format.
The SD port does not have a port VSAN.
SD ports cannot be configured using Advanced Services Modules (ASMs).
You can configure up to 16 SPAN sessions with multiple ingress (rx) sources.
You can configure a maximum of three SPAN sessions with one egress (tx) port.
In a 32-port switching module, you must configure the same session in all four ports in one port
group (unit). If you wish, you can also configure only two or three ports in this unit.
SPAN frames are dropped if the sum of the bandwidth of the sources exceeds the speed of the
destination port.
Frames dropped by a source port are not spanned.
Cisco MDS 9000 Fabric Manager Switch Configuration Guide
SD Port Characteristics
Figure
30-5.
30-7