That caveat aside, we found McData's SANavigator the biggest help managing our SAN and awarded it our Editor's Choice. SANavigator can help you from the planning stage through monitoring and managing the finished system faster and more easily than the competition. Softek's SANView is no slouch and is the best choice for users of Vixel switches or other devices SANavigator doesn't support. We can only recommend BrightStor SAN Manager to CA shops--it's more expensive and less focused than the other two products because of its use of CA's Unicenter interface.
In the ongoing rivalry between switch makers Brocade and McData, SANavigator proves compatibility is a powerful weapon. Although SANavigator has a few special features for McData networks, this management tool's outstanding support for large, high-end SANs is its strength. SANavigator can manage zoning and other features of Brocade switches and other devices on a heterogeneous SAN. Furthermore, the package performs its duties more flexibly and efficiently than its competitors.
SANavigator uses a client-server model. The server performs discovery and collects data, while up to 25 clients per server display the data and manage devices. Unlike BrightStor and SANView, which use relational databases for their data stores, SANavigator uses flat files on the server computer. This less-sophisticated architecture didn't hold the product back in our tests, however; SANavigator still provides access to the historical performance and event data the others keep in their databases, and the flat files are easier to maintain than those of a relational database.
Installation was a snap and discovery was virtually instantaneous on our test SAN. We installed both the client and server components on a Windows 2000 workstation. While the other products we tested required us to start a discovery from the client user interface, SANavigator's discovery began as soon as the installation completed. Since the switches on our test network were set up with the very secure, very common default SNMP community string, "Public," the switches and systems connected to them were in the SANavigator map when we started the client for the first time. SANavigator discovered our network's Dell switch and bridge, in addition to the host adapters and Brocade switch on the McData-supported device list. There was no need for HBA (Host Bus Adapter) agents.
The client presents the SAN in a three-pane display, much like SANView. A device tree appears in the left pane, a map in the right and an event browser in a lower pane. Roll the mouse pointer over a device and a box with the device's name, IP address and other information pops up. To really get an idea of SANavigator's power and ease of use, click on Monitor Utilization--all your Fibre Channel links magically color code and animate to indicate their utilization, in 20 percent bands. This unique feature, which even shows the different utilization for each direction of travel, lets you review your SAN utilization at a glance, where the other products only show utilization on a switch-by-switch basis.
Only SANavigator let us specify the access various users should have to the SAN. It also let us direct alerts to specific users. With BrightStor or SANView, a user's only choice is to have a read-only or read-write password, and the all alerts must go to one e-mail address. With SANavigator, a local storage administrator in, say, Kalamazoo can be restricted to managing the devices at his site and get a message on his Blackberry that his Fibre Channel switch went down, without ruining everyone else's weekend.
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