McDATA® 4Gb SAN Switch for HP p-Class BladeSystem Installation Guide (AA-RW1XA-TE, June 2005)

McDATA® 4Gb SAN Switch for HP p-Class BladeSystem installation guide 19
2 Planning
Consider the following when planning a fabric:
• Devices, page 19
• Device access, page 19
• Performance, page 20
• Multiple switch fabrics, page 21
• Switch services, page 22
• Fabric security, page 23
• Fabric management, page 25
Devices
When planning a fabric, consider the number of public devices and the anticipated demand. This will
determine the number of ports that are needed and in turn the number of switches. Refer to HP
StorageWorks SAN Design manual for more information.
For the two external FC ports, the switch uses SFP optical transceivers, but the device you are connecting to
these ports may not. Consider whether the FC ports on the device use SFP or Gigabit Interface Converters
(GBIC) transceivers, and choose fiber optic cables accordingly. Use LC-type cable connectors for SFP
transceivers and SC-type cable connectors for GBIC transceivers. Also consider the transmission speed
compatibility of your devices, HBAs, switches, and SFPs.
Consider the distribution of targets and initiators. An F_Port supports a single public device. An FL_Port can
support up to 32 public devices in an arbitrated loop.
Device access
Consider device access needs within the fabric. Access is controlled by the use of zones and zone sets.
Some zoning strategies include the following:
• Group 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 other functional group.
A zone is a named group of devices that can communicate with each other. Membership in a zone can be
defined by switch domain ID and port number, or by device worldwide name (WWN). Devices can
communicate only with devices within the same zone. A zone can be a member of more than one zone
set. Several zone sets can be defined for a fabric, but only one zone set can be active at one time. The
active zone set determines the current fabric zoning.
A zoning database is maintained on each switch consisting of the inactive zone set, the active zone set, all
zones, aliases, and their membership. Table 2 describes the zoning database limits, excluding the active
zone set. Refer to the McDATA 4Gb SAN Switch for HP p-Class BladeSystem user guide for more
information about zoning.
Table 2 Zoning limits
Limit Description
MaxZoneSets Maximum number of zone sets (1).
MaxZones Maximum number of zones (2000).
MaxAliases Maximum number of aliases (2500).
MaxTotalMembers Maximum number of zone and alias members (10,000)
that can be stored in the switch’s zoning database.