HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform administrator guide (5697-8056, March 2009)

3 Zoning
Zoning is used to partition a fabric into logical groups of devices that can access members of the
zone and are restricted from accessing devices not in the zone. Because SAN Virtualization Services
Platform (SVSP) is only supported in dual-fabric SANs, it requires at least four zones per SAN, or two
per fabric as described in the following:
• Fabric A front-end: server to DPM targets for fabric A
• Fabric A back-end: DPM initiators, VSM, and arrays, for fabric A
• Fabric B front-end: server to DPM targets for fabric B
• Fabric B back-end: DPM initiators, VSM, and arrays, for fabric B
During initial installation, your solution may have been configured using some basic zoning rules. As
the configuration grows, it may be necessary to replace the simple zoning with a more complex
zoning protocol. The reasons are buried in the implementation details of the Fibre Channel switches
and specifications. In practice, HP recommends basing all zones on the concept of a single initiator
per zone (see the HP StorageWorks SAN design reference guide). Therefore, the remainder of this
chapter describes other zoning protocols.
The default complex zoning protocol is also known as the capacity zoning protocol, and builds a
solution with the maximum number of supported front-end virtual disks, servers, back-end LUs, and
arrays.
Another zoning protocol is called high performance zoning and is designed to get the maximum
performance out of a few arrays. In each of these zoning protocols, this guide will describe the
back-end zone consisting of the:
• DPM-to-array zones
• VSM-to-DPM zones
• VSM-to-array zones
NOTE:
In each pairing is the initiator to its targets.
After the back-end zones, this guide describes the front-end zones, which consists of the server-to-DPM
zones.
NOTE:
Each DPM consists of 16 ports, divided into four groups of four ports. Each group of four ports is
called a “quad.” Each pair of quads within a DPM group has two server-to-DPM target ports and
two DPM initiator-to-array ports per fabric. To simplify the drawings and tables, this document
references the ports within a quad, and not the physical DPM port number. For example, the left-most
port of the DPM is labeled port 0 of the first quad. The left-most port of the second quad is also port
0 of that quad, while it is labeled port 5 (moving left to right on the DPM).
HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform administrator guide 47