Brocade FICON Administrator's Guide v7.1.0 (53-1002753-01, March 2013)

8 FICON Administrator’s Guide

53-1002753-01

Access control in FICON

Zoning is used to control access in a FICON environment. A zone consists of a group of ports or

WWNs. Connectivity is permitted only between connections to the switch that are in the same zone.

There are three types of zoning: WWN, port, and domain index zoning. A zone configuration

includes at least one zone. In open systems environments and in more complex FICON

deployments, the zone configuration contains multiple zones. Although index zoning is supported,

WWN zoning for QoS is recommended in environments where NPIV is deployed. For more

information on how to implement QoS domain index zoning in your fabric, refer to the QOS zones

section of the Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide for details.

When zoning changes occur, Registered State Change Notification (RSCN) messages are sent out

throughout the zone. RSCNs are part of the low-level Fibre Channel protocol that alerts channels

and devices to changes in the fabric. Using multiple smaller zones instead of one large zone helps

alleviate the need for channels and device interfaces to process RSCNs that are not relevant.

NOTE

Session-based zoning enforcement is not recommended on a FICON switch. For more information

on session-based zoning enforcement, refer to the Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide.

Cascaded zoning

Figure 6 illustrates multiple sites sharing the same disaster recovery site. Each switch or Backbone

at a remote site—labeled Director 1 and Director 3—can pass traffic to Director 2, but no traffic is

permitted between Zone A and Zone B.

FIGURE 6 Simple cascaded zoning

Figure 7 illustrates the multiple zoning concepts that can be used to restrict traffic. In Figure 7, any

host channel at the Backup Site (connected to Director 11 or Director 12) can connect to the

backup tape contained within the same zone. Notice that no more than a single hop is ever allowed

and only Channel Path Identifiers (CHPIDs) 79 and 7A on the Primary Site can connect to the

backup tape. Furthermore, CHPIDs 79 and 7A can only connect to the backup tape at the Backup

Site.

NOTE

Zoning does not replace the need to set up the connectivity from the host to storage control units in

the HCD or IOCP. For more information on zoning, refer to the Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide.