HP Storage Provisioning Manager (SPM) version 2.1 User Guide

Networks with a Zoning State of Zoned and Capability of Automated Zoning have zoning automated
by SPM. SPM actively modifies the underlying networks to create/destroy zones dynamically
depending on the needs of the users and the constraints set in place by the storage administrator.
NOTE:
• If a BNA user's zoning session overlaps with an SPM zoning session for the same fabric, then
SPM's changes will fail and will be automatically retried by SPM.
• Networks that are manually renamed using BNA's GUI need to be removed from SPM and
then re-imported. All services that were dependent on these networks must be re-configured
and re-activated.
SPM makes certain guarantees of usage of the underlying hardware as follows.
Zoning automation constraints
• SPM requires that users manually create the first zone in a network before SPM will create
any zones. SPM cannot change an open network to a zoned network.
• SPM never destroys or modifies pre-existing zones because SPM does not know the purpose
of these zones. Any zones in your network that were not created by SPM will not be modified
in any way by SPM.
• At least one zone must be in place before SPM can create zones. Because SPM does not
destroy pre-existing zones, SPM will never cause the network to go to an Open zoning state.
Zoning policy
SPM defaults to using the Single Initiator Zoning (SIZ) policy. Only candidates capable of being
connected using the SIZ policy or that are already connected are offered to the user during candidate
generation time. Using the SIZ policy, SPM creates zones on network capable of zoning automation
such that there is a single initiator per zone and only one zone per initiator. However, target
endpoints may be in more than one zone as needed by initiators. For example, the initiator's zone
is expanded to include the new targets as required. Targets that need presented to an initiator are
placed by SPM in that initiator's zone such that the zone may contain one or more targets and
expand or shrink as needed.
NOTE: In a Federated CMS type environment with parallel instances of SPM acting on the same
network, it is required that the initiators being used in the separate SPMs be distinct, allowing the
SPMs via the SIZ policy to be acting on distinct zones in the same network. Networks imported
into SPM must have distinct addresses across all imported networks.
Zoning naming convention
Zones created by SPM are named using the following convention:
• All capital letters starting with SPM_ followed by the WWN without colons of the initiator
involved in the process (for example, SPM_1012EF3400123401).
This naming convention allows SPM and network administrators to identify zones created by SPM.
Zone modification
Pre-existing zones (zones that SPM did not create) are used by SPM if they meet the requirements
of the desired Connectivity Service, but they will not be modified if they do not meet the desired
requirements. Instead, a new zone is created. Additionally if a pre-existing zone was used as is
when the service is deactivated/removed the pre-existing zone will not be touched by SPM.
However, SPM-created zones that have the same initiator as the given requirements but need
modification to include additional targets are modified as necessary. They are also removed from
the underlying device when SPM no longer needs them. This occurs as soon as all Connectivity
Services that depended on it are deactivated/removed.
64 Working with Brocade Fibre Channel networks