Patent 9727501 was granted and assigned to Brocade Communications Systems on August, 2017 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A diagnostic testing utility is used to perform online path diagnostic tests to troubleshoot components in a path that contribute to performance degradations and check application level data integrity, while traffic is allowed to flow as normal. To perform the diagnostic tests, two HBA or CNA ports at each end of a path are identified and used to send test frames to perform the diagnostic tests. The entire diagnostic procedure is performed without taking any ports or servers offline.