IBM Network Advisor V14

IBM Network Advisor V14 delivers simplified network management for dynamic SAN fabrics

Under pressure to reduce costs and increase agility, organizations can become stuck in a reactive mode, overspending on inefficient measures aimed at keeping networks up and running. By standardizing and automating processes, network teams can proactively address availability and performance issues, and dramatically reduce costs.

Network Advisor is a software management tool that delivers comprehensive management for data, storage, and converged networks.

This single application can deliver end-to-end visibility and insight across different network types with support for FC SANs, IBM Ficon, and IBM b-type SAN extension networks. This tool also supports comprehensive lifecycle management capabilities across different networks through a simple, seamless user experience.

Network Advisor simplifies storage network management and helps organizations proactively diagnose and troubleshoot issues to maximize uptime, increase operational efficiency, and reduce costs. Customizable, browser-accessible dashboards present data from discovered devices, including diagnostic information delivered through integration with Fabric Vision technology. As network issues arise, teams can navigate through the interface for more details and identify, diagnose, and troubleshoot problems before operations are affected.

Network Advisor V14 delivers following capabilities:

• Deploy 15 years of storage networking best practices in one click to simplify the deployment of monitoring with predefined, threshold-based rules, actions, and policies
• Monitor FC and FCIP health and performance indicators using customizable, browser-accessible dashboards
• Enable fast troubleshooting and problem isolation through comprehensive Fabric Vision diagnostics and dashboard playback
• Help reduce costs by automating tasks across the network management lifecycle
• Provide visibility and insight into the SAN fabric through integration with Fabric Vision technology
• Simplify operations by delivering centralized, end-to-end network management of SANs, including Gen 5 and Gen 6 FC platforms, IBM FICON, and IBM b-type SAN extension environments
• Integrate with hypervisors and management solutions from other vendors

Key prerequisites
IBM Network Advisor V14 requires a management server with specific capabilities and one of the following 64-bit platforms:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter, Standard and Enterprise
• Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 Standard and Datacenter
• Windows 8.1 Enterprise
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6, 6.7, 7.0 and 7.1
• Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.6, 6.7, 7.0, and 7.1
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11.3 and 12.0

All the above OSs are supported as Guest VMs on VMware ESXi 5.1, VMware ESXi 5.5, KVM (RedHat Enterprise Linux 6.6/6.7/7.0/7.1), and Hyper-V (Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows 2012 R2 Datacenter).

Planned availability date: November 11, 2016