In addition to providing tools for monitoring and configuring a SAN, one of the key benefits that a well-designed management mechanism can bring is the ability to efficiently detect, diagnose and solve problems in a SAN.
There are many tools to collect the necessary data in order to perform problem determination and problem source identification (PD/PSI) in a SAN. Generally speaking, these tools offer the ability to:
- Interrogate the fabric.
- Find devices or LUNs that have gone missing.
- Identify storage device or server failures.
- Identify fabric failures (usually by means of ping and traceroute).
- Interpret message and error logs.
- Fire events when failures are detected.
- Check for zoning conflicts.