Users Guide

346 Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide
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Zone aliases
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High availability considerations with broadcast zones
If a switch has broadcast zone-capable firmware on the active CP (Fabric OS v5.3.x or later) and
broadcast zone-incapable firmware on the standby CP (Fabric OS version earlier than v5.3.0), then
you cannot create a broadcast zone because the zoning behavior would not be the same across an
HA failover. If the switch failed over, then 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, then 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, then add the FL_Port to the broadcast zone.
Broadcast zones and default zoning mode
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, then 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.
Refer to “Default zoning mode” on page 360 for additional information about default zoning.
Zone aliases
A zone alias is a name assigned to a logical group of ports or WWNs. By creating an alias, you can
assign a familiar name to a device or group multiple devices into a single name. This simplifies
cumbersome data entry and allows an intuitive naming structure (such as using “NT_Hosts” to
define all NT hosts in the fabric). Using zone aliases eliminates the need for long lists of individual
zone member names.
Zone aliases also simplify repetitive entry of zone objects such as port numbers or a WWN. For
example, you can use the name “Eng” as an alias for “10:00:00:80:33:3f:aa:11”.
Naming zones for the initiator they contain can also be useful. For example, if you use the alias
SRV_MAILSERVER_SLT5 to designate a mail server in PCI slot 5, then the alias for the associated
zone is ZNE_MAILSERVER_SLT5. This clearly identifies the server host bus adapter (HBA)
associated with the zone.