McDATA® 4Gb SAN Switch for HP p-Class BladeSystem Command Line Interface Guide (AA-RWEJA-TE, November 2006)

McDATA® 4Gb SAN Switch for HP p-Class BladeSystem command line interface guide 57
6Zoning configuration
This section describes the following tasks:
• Displaying zoning database information, page 58
• Configuring the zoning database, page 63
• Modifying the zoning database, page 64
• Resetting the zoning database, page 64
• Managing zone sets, page 65
• Managing zones, page 67
Consider device access needs within the fabric. Access is controlled by the use of zoning. Some zoning
strategies include the following:
• Separate devices by operating system.
• Separate devices that have no need to communicate with other devices in the fabric or have classified
data.
• Separate devices into department, administrative, or another functional group.
• Reserve a path and its bandwidth from one port to another.
Zoning divides the fabric for purposes of controlling discovery and inbound traffic. A zone is a named
group of ports or devices. Members of the same zone can communicate with each other and transmit
outside the zone, but cannot receive inbound traffic from outside the zone.
Zoning is hardware-enforced on a switch port if the sum of the logged-in devices plus the devices zoned
with devices on that port is 64 or less. If a port exceeds this sum, that port behaves as a soft zone member.
The port continues to behave as a soft zone member until the sum of logged-in and zoned devices falls
back to 64, and the port is reset. Zoning is hardware enforced only when a port/device is a member of no
more than eight zones whose combined membership does not exceed 64. If this condition is not satisfied,
that port behaves as a soft zone member.
A zone set is a named group of zones. Each switch in the fabric maintains its own zoning database
containing the active zone set. This zoning database resides in non-volatile or permanent memory and is
therefore retained after a reset. The switch zoning database supports only one zone set. To apply zoning to
a fabric, create a zone set and activate it. When you activate a zone set, the switch distributes that zone set
and its zones to every switch in the fabric. This zone set is known as the active zone set.