McDATA StorageWorks 2/140 - Director Switch Planning Manual page 130

Planning Considerations for Fibre Channel Topologies
3
Features that Impact
Protocol Intermixing
McDATA Products in a SAN Environment - Planning Manual
3-46
• When employing inband (Fibre Channel) director or switch
management, the open-systems management server (OSMS) is
associated with the FCP protocol, and the FICON management
server (FMS) is associated with the FICON protocol. Management
server differences tend to complicate security and control issues.
NOTE: The Intrepid 10000 Director and Sphereon 4300, 4400, and 4500
Fabric Switches do not support out-of-band management through FMS.
Each server provides facilities to change zoning information
(FCP protocol) or the logical port address-based connectivity
configuration (FICON protocol), but neither provides sufficient
functionality for both protocols.
McDATA supports the following features that impact how a director
or switch behaves when deployed in an intermixed environment:
• Hardware-enforced zoning.
• SANtegrity Binding (including fabric and switch binding).
• FICON cascading.
Hardware-Enforced Zoning
Hardware-enforced zoning (hard zoning) allows a user to program
director or switch route tables that enable hardware logic to route
Fibre Channel frames. This process prevents traffic between source
and destination devices not in the same zone. Hard zoning provides
the open-systems environment with the same protection that PDCM
arrays provide in the FICON environment.
In environments that include discovery-oriented devices (FCP) and
definition-oriented devices (FICON), system administrators must
keep device definitions and zoning definitions synchronized. Hard
zoning enforces zoning information at the director or switch level
and ensures the information takes precedence over access definitions
configured at the device level. This provides a security element that is
useful for mixed environments using both definition and discovery.
For additional information, refer to Zoning.