Specifications

30 Getting Started with the McDATA Intrepid FICON Director
Figure 3-8 shows a cascaded FICON Director environment with high integrity. The FICON
Director prevents FC frames (user-data streams) from being delivered to the wrong
destination if cables are incorrectly connected.
Figure 3-8 Cascaded FICON Directors with Fabric Binding and Insistent Domain IDs
3.6 Zoning
Zoning is a method to enable or disable communication between different ports and between
attached devices (based on WWN). You can put a group of ports or WWNs into the same
zone to enable communication only between those ports or WWNs. There are good reasons
to zone, for example:
򐂰 To prevent non-FICON-capable devices from seeing FICON-capable devices
򐂰 To limit the access to devices with confidential data to specific servers
򐂰 To control the amount of paths between servers and devices
򐂰 In an intermixed environment, restrict FCP traffic from accessing FICON-capable devices
Several zones can be included in one zone set. An active zone set is valid for all switches
belonging to the same fabric.
Only one zone set can be active in a fabric at a time, although more than one zone set can be
defined in a switch.
For a better understanding of zoning, refer to the configuration example in Figure 3-9.
Restriction: Fabric binding is required for FICON support of cascaded Director, and
switched point-to-point configuration when a 2-byte link address is used.
FICON
Switch
LP1-1 LP2-2 LP3-3
zSeries
Switch-13
Control
Unit
FICON
Switch
Switch-14
ISL
FICON
Switch
LP1-1 LP2-2 LP3-3
zSeries
Switch-13
Control
Unit
FICON
Switch
Switch-14
FICON Channel
ISL
Port-27 Port-27
Port-06
FICON Channel
Port-06
FC fabric
with high-integrity
(fabric binding)
CUI-0
UA-00
CUI-0
UA-00
CU-8000 CU-9000
Incorrect
cable swap
LP1-1
I/O request
to CU 9000
FC frames (users-data
stream) are discarded by
the FC switch (no route to
switch 14)
Port enters
"Invalid
attachment
state"
The I/O
operation
times out in
the channel
1
2
4
6
5
Channel
initialization
completes
(Fabric Binding
operational)
3
7
Function of fabric binding