Brocade Fabric OS Administrator's Guide Supporting Fabric OS v6.3.0 (53-1001336-02, November 2009)

244 Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide
53-1001336-02
Zoning configurations
11
Zoning configurations
You can store a number of zones in a zoning configuration database. The maximum number of
items that can be stored in the zoning configuration database depends on the following criteria:
• Number of switches in the fabric.
• Whether or not interoperability mode is enabled.
• Number of bytes for each item name. The number of bytes required for an item name depends
on the specifics of the fabric, but cannot exceed 64 bytes for each item.
When enabling a new zone configuration, ensure that the size of the defined configuration does not
exceed the maximum configuration size supported by all switches in the fabric. This is particularly
important if you downgrade to a Fabric OS version that supports a smaller zone database than the
current Fabric OS. In this scenario, the zone database in the current Fabric OS would have to be
changed to the smaller zone database before the downgrade.
You can use the cfgSize command to check both the maximum available size and the currently
saved size on all switches. If you think you are approaching the maximum, you can save a partially
completed zoning configuration and use the cfgSize command to determine the remaining space.
The cfgSize command reports the maximum available size on the current switch only. It cannot
determine the maximum available size on other switches in the fabric.
NOTE
The minimum zoning database size is 4 bytes, even if the zoning database is empty.
For important considerations for managing zoning in a fabric, and more details about the maximum
zone database size for each version of the Fabric OS, see “Zoning database size” on page 243.
If you create or make changes to a zone configuration, you must enable the configuration for the
changes to take effect.
Creating a zoning configuration
1. Connect to the switch and log in as admin.
2. Enter the cfgCreate command, using the following syntax:
cfgcreate "cfgname", "member[; member...]"
3. Enter the cfgSave command to save the change to the defined configuration.
The cfgSave command ends and commits the current zoning transaction buffer to both volatile
and nonvolatile memory. If a transaction is open on a different switch in the fabric when this
command is run, the transaction on the other switch is automatically aborted. A message
displays on the other switches to indicate that the transaction was aborted.
Example
switch:admin> cfgcreate "NEW_cfg", "purplezone; bluezone; greenzone"
switch:admin> cfgsave
You are about to save the Defined zoning configuration. This
action will only save the changes on the Defined configuration.
Any changes made on the Effective configuration will not
take effect until it is re-enabled.
Do you want to save Defined zoning configuration only? (yes, y, no, n): [no] y