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Products - SANInsight Fibre TAP Patch Panel System

SANInsight® Fibre TAP Patch Panel System

Real-Time Monitoring of the Physical Layer

TAP Patch Panel SystemRapid increases in both the operating speeds and general complexity of constantly growing SAN technologies, exacerbated by the high change rates demanded of enterprise IT organizations, significantly increase demands on the fiber optic physical layer. Physical layer maintenance requires the ability to quickly and easily add, change, or remove links and devices. Physical layer monitoring is the real-time acquisition of error, performance, and utilization data via Traffic Access Points, or TAPs. Monitoring ensures the accuracy of the changes and validates that they produce only the desired results. Physical layers that address both requirements enable the Fibre Channel SANs operating on top of them to be iteratively optimized for maximum availability, performance, and utilization.

Fiber optic cable plants make broad use of patch panels, which simplify changing device connections to pre-installed cabling, to improve maintainability. But while the tremendous value of passive, out-of-band monitoring is increasingly recognized, the deployment of the enabling TAPs has not yet reached the same level of ubiquity, due at least in part to the low fiber density and limited configurations of pre-existing TAP solutions.

Virtual Instruments’ SANInsight TAP Patch Panel System integrates traffic access points (TAPs) with best-of-breed fiber patch components to make fiber cable plants both maintainable and monitorable. TAPs transparently provide a passive, out-of-band, full line rate copy of all traffic to Fibre Channel monitoring and diagnostic equipment, including industry-standard protocol analyzers and Virtual Instruments’ VirtualWisdom SAN Performance Probe real-time monitoring devices. Installing TAPs when the physical layer is initially deployed provides immediate monitoring access for both tactical troubleshooting and more proactive performance, capacity, and cost optimization, uniting both physical layer and SAN best practices. The TAP Patch Panel System provides a broad range of streamlined options for implementing TAPs into both new and existing cable plants.

 

SANInsight® TAP Patch Panel Fatures

  • Allows passive, out-of-band monitoring of all Fibre Channel traffic
  • Adds no latency and does not alter live traffic
  • High density: 4-12 TAPs per cartridge; a total of up to 48 tapped patch links in 1U of rack space
  • Standard 70/30 light split minimizes attenuation of live signal
  • Supports LC or MT connectors for flexibility in SAN connectivity
  • Optimized, low-loss LC and MT adapters; industry standard color coding for all trunk and patch adapters 

Technical Specifications

The SANInsight® TAP Patch Cassette is available in four standard configurations:

  • 8 live fibers/4 duplex links; front duplex LC adapters for trunk, patch, and TAP connections. Part # TCV-008DFDFDF-XY.
  • 12 live fibers/6 duplex links; rear duplex LC adapters for trunk connections; front duplex LC adapters for patch and TAP connections. Part # TCV-012DRDFDF-XY.
  • 12 live fibers/6 duplex links; rear MT adapters for trunk connections; front duplex LC adapters for patch and TAP connections. Part # TCV-012MRDFDF-XY.
  • 24 live fibers/12 duplex links; rear MT adapters for trunk and TAP connections; front duplex LC adapters for patch connections. Part # TCV-024MRDFMR-XY.

 

Each of these configurations is available in several fiber types and split ratios; these are specified in the X and Y characters of the part numbers, respectively, as follows:

  • X= 5 for OM3 50μm laser-optimized multi-mode fiber; 6 for 62.5μm multi-mode fiber, and 9 for 9um single-mode fiber.
  • Y=7 for 70/30 split ratio and 5 for 50/50 split ratio.

 

Additional fiber density and adapter configurations of the VI TAP Patch Cassette, as well as VI MT-to-LC Cassettes without TAPs and MT-MT and LC-LC adapter plates, are available by special order.

TAP Patch Shelves

The SANInsight TAP Patch Panel System includes two 1U shelves, each mounting up to 4 TAP Patch Cassettes:

  • TPS-01ES is a fully-enclosed patch shelf with an inner tray that slides to both front and rear to simplify installation.
  • TPS-01OB is a fixed shelf with an open back.

Both shelves are for EIA standard 19” racks (adapter ears for 23” racks are available separately) and are 14” deep, with multiple cable tie-downs and embosses for included rings for secure and serviceable and cable management. TPS-01ES also has multiple cable entry knockouts on the sides and rear, and uses screwed-on plates to secure the entry grommets to prevent accidental dislodging and potential abrasion damage to the cables.

Datasheets and Whitepapers

  • SANInsight Fibre TAP Patch Panel System | Virtual Instrument’s new SANInsight TAP Patch Panel System provides a range of options for integrating the unique, patented technology into patch panels. By unifying TAP and patch functions into a single layer of physical infrastructure, SANInsight significantly reduces the cost, complexity, and infrastructure impact of TAP deployment. SANInsight facilitates the broad installation of TAPs into both new and existing physical infrastructures, fully addressing the best practices monitorability requirement and enabling complete SAN optimization.

  • Top 7 Business Reasons for Tapping Your Fibre Channel SAN | February 2011 | Physical layer monitoring is the real-time acquisition of error, performance, and utilization data via Traffic Access Points, or TAPs. Monitoring ensures the accuracy of the changes and validates that they produce only the desired results. Physical layers that address both requirements enable the Fibre Channel SANs operating on top of them to be iteratively optimized for maximum availability, performance, and utilization.

  • Taneja Group White Paper | April 2010 | Building the Data Center for Infrastructure Visibility

  • “Storage Magazine and SearchStorage.com Storage Networking Product of the Year” | February 2010 | SearchStorage.com

Related Product Datasheets

VirtualWisdom Solution Components

  • VirtualWisdom Virtual Server Probe | Virtual Server Probe collects information specifically about the utilization and performance of virtual machines within the VMware environment via the VMware vCenter server API. It is a virtual software probe that automatically discovers and monitors 120+ CPU, memory, network and disk I/O metrics for VMware ESX virtual machines, physical servers, and clusters. Actual measured data from VirtualWisdom enables IT managers to proactively balance the provisioning of applications on virtual machines for maximum application performance with the confidence that systems will not slow down or fail.

  • VirtualWisdom SAN Availability Probe | As a component of the Virtual Instruments’ VirtualWisdom solutions, the SAN Availability Probe is a non-agent based software probe that utilizes the MIB (management information block) from Fibre Channel switches via SNMP to gather switch performance and link error statistics in a non-intrusive manner. These critical switch statistics are collected by VirtualWisdom’s Server software and presented to the user in an easy to use configurable, graphical user interface.

  • VirtualWisdom SAN Performance Probe | The Virtual Instruments VirtualWisdom SAN Performance Probe analyzes every packet on a fibre channel SAN. A SAN Performance Probe can be dedicated to a single SAN link or, using a SANInsight Rover, can rove among many SAN links to provide statistics about storage I/O traffic as it relates to an application server, storage subsystem, remote replication, virtualization or other key SAN device or application.

SANInsight Hardware

  • SANInsight Fibre TAP Patch Panel System | Virtual Instrument’s new SANInsight TAP Patch Panel System provides a range of options for integrating the unique, patented technology into patch panels. By unifying TAP and patch functions into a single layer of physical infrastructure, SANInsight significantly reduces the cost, complexity, and infrastructure impact of TAP deployment. SANInsight facilitates the broad installation of TAPs into both new and existing physical infrastructures, fully addressing the best practices monitorability requirement and enabling complete SAN optimization.

  • SANInsight Enterprise Rover | The Virtual Instruments’ SANInsight Rover provides advanced capabilities to VirtualWisdom® by maximizing the number of SAN links monitored by a SAN Performance Probe. The Rover extends the reach of VirtualWisdom in large enterprise SANs and lowers the cost of SAN monitoring and analysis.

  • SANInsight Protocol Analyzer | The Virtual Instruments SANInsight Protocol Analyzer is a critical tool for IT personnel to troubleshoot component and systems utilizing the Fibre Channel protocol. It captures traffic and graphically reports performance metrics and data errors in real time whenever there is live Fibre Channel traffic over any monitored link. In addition, users can view MB/s, Kframes/sec, utilization, frame errors, and physical layer errors from each direction of the link.

  • SANInsight Mobile Monitoring Option | As a member of the Virtual Instruments’ VirtualWisdom solutions family, the Mobile Monitoring Option (MMO) is designed to provide all of the features and benefits of VirtualWisdom-based instrumentation, monitoring, and measurement in a purpose-built, mobile cabinet, designed to house SANInsightTM Fibre Channel monitoring equipment. Use of the MMO enables IT staff to easily and quickly deploy an infrastructure optimizing VirtualWisdom solution anywhere in the datacenter.