Category Archives: Uncategorized

Revision 648 – alishow/zoneshow Parser Safely Ignores HardZoning, Multiple cfg:

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Hard-zoning records are no longer an issue in the alishow parser.

The external fibrechannel-parsers (fcparser.jar) recently safely ignored multiple cfg: sections, but was still hanging up on hard zoning records.

hard-zoning records — basically “the zone includes blade X, port Y” — not even recommended by Brocade, is occasionally seen in “in the wild”, typically in environments merged into the current one through corporate merger/acquisition of an older SAN. Few support the additional effort and logistical challenge of maintaining hard-zoning of any significant size. It’s those “attritioning out” systems that administrators are nicely letting be until they roll off their life-cycle into recycle.

For now, those hard zoning records would stop the parser immediately. Now, the parser ignores them, still reads the zoning record if available, and carries on.

Revision 640 – Filter or Replace Nicknames

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In this revision, the FAE tools gain the ability to filter or replace automatically-provided nicknames in the imported nicknames. This includes:

  • Nicknames that look like FCIDs (which are automatically provided for devices logged into F-ports)
  • Nicknames that look like WWPNs (which are typically ISLs: something attached, but no FLOGI)
  • Nicknames ending in “(ISL)” which tend to be completed ISLs (discover both sides)

Filter (-f) removes these nicknames, allowing a cleaned-up nickname file to be imported without accidentally setting generated nicknames to be user-provided (hence “sticky”).

Replace (-S, for Suggested) swaps with Suggested Nicknames (SNICKs) — nicknames based on well known patterns of WWPNs by deliberate manufacturer habit or design.

Nicknames that do not look like predictable/default nicknames are not affected: this is intended for cleaning up a Portal Service export that includes all sorts of additional information.

Revision 638 – Suggested Nicknames for Pure Storage WWN Patterns

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Expanded the option “-w” from Suggested Nicknames for Known WWN Patterns to vict.jar such that vict.jar -w 52:4a:93:7d:74:f1:14:00 offers “Pure-d74f114-CT0.FC0” or “Pure-d74f114:0:0” in brief, giving (weak) nicknames to Pure Storage Flash-based storage targets.

Note that since WWN patterns are moved to the external WWNDesc project, this is merely test code to ensure that the parallel work in the external project is functioning as required today and henceforth.

This nickname pattern is based on what I’ve seen deployed, and has no clear direction or description from Pure Storage. Pure is actually shipping QLogic HBAs as storage target FA ports, like many other vendors, however they have the decency and class to re-brand the OUI as their own OUI, making them easier to identify. THANKS, Pure! You make our lives a bit easier by taking that extra step.

Revision 634 – Use External Opensource XPathTool

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To reduce the level of obscure code, and to allow the collection of XPath-based XML tools cross-language into a single repos, the external XPathTool project will be used for XPath -based XML get/set of XML values. Samples are in testsuite.at in that repository.

This code has appeared in the last 4 years of my projects based on some C code I used from a test case. The Pure-Java was used to emulate that same result without having to cross-compile where Windows has a kinda crazy build environment and significant effort-cost plus license cost to maintain a build server. I’m no “rah rah Pure-Java yay!”, but I like that I can send one jar file, and it works on Unix (and variants), Windows, Linux (and variants).

Revision 624 – Shorter XLSX Sheet Names in HUP

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In the army, in boot camp, “short-sheeting” is both a method of using only one top sheet to make a bed, plus in “blading a bud” by the surprise of a very short pit. “blading” is like a prank not a shank, and a “pit” is a sagging cot — both the noun and the verb of sleeping on one. but I digress.

This revision is a reaction to the surprise of having only 32-characters for a XLSX sheet. Didn’t see that coming, but hey, it’s 4x as long as an 8.3, so I guess we win.

I had to make a quick shortening implicit function in the HUP client, so this commits that change to the tool.

While doing this, “NoCapHeader filtering” was added to swap in the words “% Capacity” to “Utilization %” — it seems there’s a reader who sees a [% Capacity] for a link-utilization report having nothing to do with Storage and assumes it’s a measure of his used storage. huh? There’s no way to predict users! That’s cool. It’s a fairly unglamourous filter, but I’m a fan of faster comprehension, so it’s there now. This is automatically in the use of the viwc-hup-slxs.jar, no need to activate.