Below are some pre-requisites and important notes for enabling Fabric Notifications on B-Series switches and directors:
- Dell supports Fabric OS 9.2.0a or above with Fabric Notifications. MAPS thresholds for the Conservative, Moderate and Aggressive policies were adjusted in this release as a result of more thorough and targeted Fabric Notifications testing.
- Connectrix DS-66xxB/ED-DCX6B and DS-77xxB/ED-DCX7B hardware and higher are supported.
- For congestion notifications, no additional licensing is required.
- For link integrity notifications, the Fabric Vision license must be installed. Fabric Vision is pre-installed and activated on DS-77xxB switches, ED-DCX6B and ED-DCX7B directors. For DS-66xxB switches, the Enterprise Bundle must be purchased separately.
- Link integrity notifications are not enabled by default. The MAPS feature within Fabric Vision drives link integrity notifications. The Conservative, Moderate or Aggressive policy must be enabled within MAPS for the switch to send these notifications. MAPS thresholds vary by policy and are used to trigger Fabric Notification events. Please reference the MAPS Initial Setup and Operation section of the Brocade Fabric OS MAPS User Guide for instructions on enabling any of these policies. Custom policies should be based on the Conservative, Moderate or Aggressive policies, so that the Fabric Notifications telemetry and thresholds are configured correctly.
- Fabric notifications are sent by B-Series switches and directors. These notifications are not logged but can be correlated to MAPS telemetry types ( CRC errors) and thresholds.
- FCIP is not supported with the MP-78xxB extension switches and SX6 extension blade.
- E-Ports are not currently supported.
Please refer to the Fabric Perf Impact Notification (FPIN) Simple Support Matrix within the PowerMax/VMAX All Flash/VMAX3 Features Simple Support Matrix for more information and for Dell supported configurations. Please refer to the B-Series release notes and documentation for additional information and limitations. Below are other useful references for B-Series with Fabric Notifications: