Understanding Cisco Traffic Analyzer

Performance Manager collects Fibre Channel level performance statistics using SNMP to access counters on Cisco MDS 9000 Family switches. To view detailed SCSI I/O statistics, you need to look at the data on an SD port with the help of Cisco Traffic Analyzer, which uses the Cisco Port Analyzer Adapter 2 (PAA-2).

Cisco Traffic Analyzer provides real-time analysis of SPAN traffic or analysis of captured traffic through a Web browser user interface. Traffic encapsulated by one or more Port Analyzer Adapter 2 products can be analyzed concurrently with a single workstation running Cisco Traffic Analyzer, which is based on ntop, a public domain software enhanced by Cisco for Fibre Channel traffic analysis.

Round-trip response times, SCSI I/Os per second, SCSI read or traffic throughput and frame counts, SCSI session status, and management task information are monitored. Additional statistics are also available on Fibre Channel frame sizes and network management protocols.

For seamless performance analysis and troubleshooting, Cisco Traffic Analyzer can be launched in-context from Fabric Manager. Port world wide name (pWWN), Fibre Channel ID (FC ID), FC alias, and VSAN names are passed to Cisco Traffic Analyzer.

Cisco Traffic Analyzer must be downloaded and installed separately from the following website:

http://www.cisco.com/kobayashi/sw-center/sw-stornet.shtml.

Caution    

Cisco Traffic Analyzer for Fibre Channel throughput values are not accurate when used with the original Cisco Port Analyzer Adapter (PAA) if data truncation is enabled. PAA Version 2 (product ID DS-PAA_2) is required to achieve accurate results with truncation, because it adds a count that enables Cisco Traffic Analyzer to determine how many data bytes were actually transferred.



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