SupportConnect - BrightStor SAN Designer Newsletter, Version 04.02
  

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Computer Associates
E-News
BrightStor® SAN Designer Newsletter
Version 04.02
June 16, 2004

In This Newsletter
Product News
> BrightStor® SAN Designer r11.0 Beta Program

Product Updates
> BrightStor® SAN Designer v1.6 Update 8 is Generally Available
> BrightStor® SAN Manager Designer Export Utility v1.0 is Generally Available

General Information
> BrightStor® SANexplorer Helps Document Your CNT and QLogic SANs
> How to Add New Brocade Switch Support in BrightStor® SAN Designer Discovery
> Discovering the SAN: Inside Designer's Discovery Engine

Product News
BrightStor® SAN Designer r11.0 Beta Program
CA's family of industry-leading BrightStor® software just got better!

The new beta versions of BrightStor® Storage Management products are designed specifically to save you time and money. BrightStor delivers a powerful set of features
(as shown below) to address the challenges of explosive data growth.
  • Storage design, planning, and change management
  • Storage intelligence and resource management
  • Storage infrastructure, fabric, and device management
  • Storage provisioning and work flow management
BrightStor Storage Management solutions deliver a powerful set of benefits:
  • Reduced labor costs with greater span of control
  • Increased storage utilization thereby accelerating ROI
  • Improved management of current staff through improved operational efficiency
  • Achieve regulatory compliance without breaking the bank
As a part of this beta initiative, we are also accepting applications for BrightStor SAN Designer r11.1. Besides added support for several new hardware devices, this release includes exciting new features that make the tool much more effective for designing and updating large SAN environments.

You are cordially invited to participate in the BrightStor Storage Management Beta Program. By becoming a beta participant, you will gain firsthand experience of the product as well as provide valuable feedback on new product functionality so CA can continue to deliver the most business value and ship the highest quality product possible. Registration for the beta program and details on the new product features are available now at ca.com/betas.

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Product Updates
BrightStor® SAN Designer v1.6 Update 8 is Generally Available
We are pleased to announce the availability of BrightStor SAN Designer v1.6 Update 8. This new release includes all maintenance published prior to this update as well as the following enhancements.

New features include:
  1. CNT and QLogic fabric discoveries
    1. It can now discover CNT and QLogic switches.
    2. It can now discover accessories in EMC Symmetrix storage arrays.
  2. New shapes (see list of compatible devices on SAN Designer support page), including:
    1. SAN fabric equipment
    2. SAN host equipment
    3. SAN disk storage systems
    4. SAN tape storage equipment
  3. Enhancements to existing features including:
    1. Cisco discovery is enhanced to utilize the remote discovery in Cisco switches to improve the discovery of the connected devices.
    2. Support of Emulex v2 HBAnyware is added.
    3. Compatibility of StorageTek Hardware has been updated to the latest rules and the support of the StorageTek B-series disk arrays has been added.
    4. Connectivity Check is updated to check the EMC CLARiiON and StorageTek
      B-series disk arrays.
    5. Latest Firmware Check is updated.
    6. Switch Domain ID Conflict Check adds the support of CNT and QLogic switches.
    7. Zoning Check adds support of tape libraries that are connected to the SCSI ports on bridges.
For customers on annual software maintenance, Update 8 is available at no cost and can be downloaded from the BrightStor SAN Designer Product News page at: supportconnectw.ca.com/public/brightstor-sandsgn/infodocs/bssandsgn-7072.asp.

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BrightStor® SAN Manager Designer Export Utility v1.0 is Generally Available
You could generate a Visio drawing of your SAN if you are using BrightStor® SAN Manager 1.1. You can download the BrightStor SAN Manager Designer Export Utility v1.0 under the utility directory at:
supportconnectw.ca.com/public/brightstor-sandsgn/infodocs/bssandsgn-7072.asp.

Follow the instructions in the release notes and it will extract the fabric and zoning data in your BSM repository and create the BrightStor SAN Designer XML file. If you have BrightStor SAN Designer, then you can import the XML to make the drawing and run design checks, reports, and use all other functions. Even if you don't have BrightStor SAN Designer, you still can get a Visio drawing of your SAN using the SANexplorer utility available at: ca.com/Solutions/Collateral.asp?CID=55451&ID=4590.

A CA BrightStor specialist will contact you with the results. At the conclusion, you will have a better understanding of your SAN environment and a free VISIO diagram of your SAN topology.

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General Information
BrightStor® SANexplorer Helps Document Your CNT and QLogic SANs
Always wanted a Visio diagram of your SAN environment without having to manually draw the entire topology? CA offers a free tool to discover your SAN topology. This free tool is now updated to discover your CNT and QLogic SANs and it can discover the accessories in your Symmetrix storage arrays too. The tool is available for download at: ca.com/Solutions/Collateral.asp?CID=55451&ID=4590.

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How to Add New Brocade Switch Support in BrightStor® SAN Designer Discovery
BrightStor SAN Designer tries to keep up with the new switches. If it is behind, sometimes you can fix it instead of waiting for the new update release. For Brocade switches, their mappings are encoded in an XML file. You can add additional entries to make the new switch be recognized again. This technical document shows you how.

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Discovering the SAN: Inside Designer's Discovery Engine
BrightStor® SAN Designer users have found that one of the immediate benefits of Designer ownership is that they can finally find out exactly what the topology of their SAN looks like. This may sound strange, but as the storage infrastructure grows, it is quite common for the documentation to lag behind implementation to the point where no one actually knows the exact layout anymore.

Although SMI-S promises to make discovery and management simple, the fact is that there is limited hardware installed at the moment that is SMI-S compliant. What there is, in real installations, is a mixture of hardware from ancient to leading edge, and that means Designer needs to use multiple techniques to recognize everything. This article describes how Designer's discovery engine works, with the hope that if you know how it works, you can tune it to get the best discovery result.

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