High Availability Considerations With Broadcast Zones; Loop Devices And Broadcast Zones; Backward Compatibility With Pre-5.3.0 Switches; Broadcast Zones And Default Zoning - HP A7533A - Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch Base Administrator's Manual

High Availability considerations with broadcast zones

If a switch has broadcast zone-capable firmware on the active CP (Fabric OS 5.3.x or later) and broadcast
zone-incapable firmware on the standby CP (Fabric OS version earlier than 5.3.0), you cannot create a
broadcast zone because the zoning behavior would not be the same across an HA failover. If the switch
failed over, the broadcast zone would lose its special significance and would be treated as a regular zone.

Loop devices and broadcast zones

Delivery of broadcast packets to individual devices in a loop is not controlled by the switch. Consequently,
adding loop devices to a broadcast zone does not have any effect. If a loop device is part of a broadcast
zone, all devices in that loop receive broadcast packets.
Best practice: All devices in a single loop should have uniform broadcast capability. If all the devices in the
loop can handle broadcast frames, add the FL_Port to the broadcast zone.

Backward compatibility with pre-5.3.0 switches

In a broadcast zone, do not include any members connected to switches running firmware versions earlier
than Fabric OS 5.3.0. For pre-5.3.0 switches, the broadcast zone name does not have any special
significance and a broadcast zone appears as a regular zone.
If a broadcast zone has any members that are connected to pre-5.3.0 switches, those devices are zoned
together.
Broadcast packets are checked only for local devices in the fabric. If a remote switch is running pre-5.3.0
firmware, the broadcast zone does not have any effect on devices connected to that remote switch.
The zone validate command can flag devices that are part of a broadcast zone and are connected
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to a pre-5.3.0 switch. HP strongly recommends that you run zone
are changed or any devices are moved in a fabric.

Broadcast zones and default zoning

The default zoning mode defines the device accessibility behavior if zoning is not implemented or if there
is no effective zone configuration. The default zoning mode has two options:
• All Access—All devices within the fabric can communicate with all other devices.
• No Access—Devices in the fabric cannot access any other device in the fabric.
If a broadcast zone is active, even if it is the only zone in the effective configuration, the default zone
setting is not in effect.
If the effective configuration has only a broadcast zone, the configuration appears as a No Access
configuration. To change this configuration to All Access, you must put all the available devices in a
regular zone.
See "Default zoning

Creating and managing zone aliases

A zone alias is a logical group of ports or WWNs. You can simplify the process of creating zones by first
specifying aliases, which eliminates the need for long lists of individual zone member names.
If you are creating a new alias using aliCreate w, "1,1", and a user in another Telnet session executes
cfgEnable (or cfgDisable, or cfgSave), the other user's transaction will abort your transaction and you will
receive an error message. Creating a new alias while there is a zone merge taking place might also abort
your transaction. For more details about zone merging and zone merge conflicts, see
fabric additions" on page 221.
To create an alias:
1. Connect to the switch and log in as admin.
2. Issue the aliCreate command with the following syntax:
alicreate "aliasname", "member[; member...]"
206 Administering Advanced Zoning
mode" on page 212 for additional information about default zoning.
validate whenever zone configurations
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"New switch or