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IBM System Storage Data Center Fabric Manager V10

Configure and manage multiple IBM System Storage b-type and mixed
b-type and m-type network fabrics from a single interface

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Highlights

  • Centralises management of IBM System Storage SAN b-type (Brocade®) and mixed b-type and m-type (McDATA) network fabrics within and across datacentres
  • Maximises productivity and reduces expenses by automating tasks and providing easy-to-use wizard-driven operations
  • Delivers real-time and historical performance monitoring to enable proactive problem diagnosis, maximise resource utilisation and facilitate capacity planning
  • Supports server virtualization, including setting Quality of Service (QoS) levels for applications running on virtual machines
  • Helps administrators meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs) via innovative event notification, monitoring, troubleshooting and diagnosis capabilities

IBM System Storage™ Data Centre Fabric Manager (DCFM™) is a comprehensive network management application that enables end-to-end management of data center fabrics. DCFM manages and secures the flow of data across multiple fabrics—empowering IT organizations to achieve their SLA, security and compliance goals while containing operational expenses. It provides exceptional scalability and performance that helps maximise data availability. In addition, DCFM features easy-to-use administrative tools that streamline and automate repetitive tasks so organizations can achieve new levels of productivity and efficiency.

Data Centre Fabric Manager is a key component of IBM’s New Enterprise Data Centre architecture and supports and complements Brocade’s Data Centre Fabric architecture. DCFM is designed for unified management of data centre fabrics—from ports on storage devices all the way to the Host Bus Adapters in physical or virtualised servers. It can be used to configure IBM System Storage SAN768B and Brocade DCX™ backbone directors along with other SAN products manufactured by Brocade.


Feature Benefit
Innovative capabilities for monitoring, troubleshooting, diagnostics and proactive event notification
  • Proactively monitor critical fabric health information
  • Configure Quality of Service (QoS) priorities for applications running on both physical and virtual servers
  • Collect and display performance statistics in real-time and with historical views for proactive problem determination
  • Capture, back up, and compare switch configuration profiles through advanced cloning
  • Perform automatic data collection and trigger Call Home notification for earlier fault isolation, diagnosis and remote support
Automate repetitive tasks through an intuitive wizard-driven approach
  • Streamline firmware download, switch configuration, backup/restore and the collection of diagnostic data across groups of switches
  • Edit zone information and preview the impact of proposed changes without affecting the production fabric
  • Provide a configurable fabric snapshot/compare capability to track changes to fabric objects and membership
  • Generate reports for status changes, port usage, zoning activation, and more—either on-demand, automatically on a scheduled basis, on in response to a fabric event
  • Configure and manage FICON™ and cascaded FICON environments while providing powerful analysis and diagnostic facilities
  • Configure, monitor and optimise Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) tunnels across WAN links
  • Support Fibre Channel Routing, including configuration, zoning, visualization, analysis and troubleshooting
Provide detailed visibility into performance utilisation of hardware and network bandwidth
  • Measure and display real-time and historical network performance to identify under- and over-utilised links and maximise application availability and performance
  • Maximise Return on Investment (ROI) by better utilizing existing infrastructure resources and identify new network requirements
  • Generate a comprehensive inventory of components while creating an intuitive device map to visualise the end-to-end topology of data centre fabrics
  • Facilitate capacity and availability planning with reports that can be shared across organization

Product Number 5639-D1F
Supported Client/Server Operating Systems Microsoft® Windows® 2003 Server, XP, Vista and 2008 Server
Red Hat® Linux® AS 4.0, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced, and SUSE™ Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1
Sun Solaris 10
VMware® ESX Server 3.5 (Guest Operating Systems supported: Windows 2003 Server, Linux Red Hat AS5 and SUSE Linux ES10)
Hard drive storage 1 GB free disk space needed for installation. 5 GB free disk space needed after installation for small and medium-size SANs, and 10 GB for large SANs. (To allow for a larger amount of historical data, 20 GB free space is recommended for small and medium-size SANs and 40 GB of free space is recommended for large SANs.)
Server configurations
Windows, Linux and SUSE Linux Client/Server installation*
  • For 1 to 2000 Ports / 1 to 20 Domains: 2 GHz CPU with 2 GB RAM
  • For 2001 to 5000 Ports / 21 to 60 Domains: 3 GHz CPU Dual Processor with 2 GB RAM
  • For 5001 to 9000 Ports / 61 to 120 Domains: 2.4 GHz CPU Dual Processor Dual Core with 2 GB RAM
Solaris Server, Solaris Client and VMware Additional specifications available at
ibm.com/systems/storage/san/b-type
Brocade firmware versions
  • Fabrics composed exclusively of FOS require version 5.0 or higher
  • Fabrics composed of both FOS and M-EOS require FOS version 6.0 or higher and M-EOS version 9.6 or higher
Required fabric OS features
  • Some DCFM features require specific FOS licenses features, such as Advanced Performance Monitoring, Fabric Watch and Adaptive Networking

* A modem is needed on target physical hardware to utilise the Call Home feature

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