Administering Advanced Zoning; About Zoning; Zoning Example - HP A7533A - Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch Base Administrator's Manual

20 Administering Advanced Zoning

This chapter provides procedures for using the Advanced Zoning feature.

About Zoning

Zoning enables you to partition your SAN into logical groups of devices that can access each other. For
example, you can partition your SAN into two zones, winzone and unixzone, so that your Windows
servers and storage do not interact with your UNIX servers and storage.
Zones can be configured dynamically. They can vary in size, depending on the number of fabric-connected
devices, and devices can belong to more than one zone. Because zone members can access only other
members of the same zone, a device not included in a zone is not available to members of that zone.
When using a mixed fabric—that is, a fabric containing two or more switches running different fabric
operating systems—you should use the switch with the highest Fabric OS level to perform zoning tasks.
If a Zoning license is removed, you must make sure it is reinstalled properly on the affected switch before
attempting the cfgEnable zoning operation. Failure to follow these steps can cause inconsistency of the
zoning configuration on the affected switches should a zoning operation be attempted from a remote
switch in the fabric. On the affected switches, an error message indicates that the Zoning license is
missing.
You can use zones to logically consolidate equipment for efficiency or to facilitate time-sensitive functions;
for example, use zoning to create a temporary zone to back up nonmember devices.
Any zone object connected to the fabric can be included in one or more zones. Zone objects can
communicate only with objects within the same zone. For example, consider
configured: Red, Green, and Blue.
• Server 1 can communicate only with the Loop 1 devices.
• Server 2 can communicate only with the RAID and Blue zone devices.
• Server 3 can communicate with the RAID device and the Loop1 device.
• The Loop 2 JBODs are not assigned to a zone; no other zoned fabric device can access them.
Figure 23

Zoning example

Red zone
To list the commands associated with Zoning, use the zoneHelp command.
For detailed information on the Zoning commands used in the procedures, refer to the Fabric OS
Command Reference Manual or to the online man page for each command.
Before using the procedures, you should become familiar with the Zoning concepts described in the
following sections.
JBOD
Loop 2
Fibre Channel Fabric
Server1
Server2
Hub
Loop 1
Figure 23, which shows
Blue zone
RAID
Server3
Green zone
Fabric OS 5.3.0 administrator guide 369