Owner manual

Zone group concepts
Zone groups allocate resources for device load balancing purposes and for selectively allowing access to
data. For planning purposes, zone groups and assignments can be pre-configured, even if servers or disk
drives are not yet installed.
There are two types of zone groups:
• Drive bay zone groups—Group together drive bays, which can be chosen from one or more MDS600
storage enclosures or MDS600 storage enclosure drawers. Server bays assigned this type of zone
group have access to the drive bays included in the zone group as if they were directly connected to
those servers. Zoned storage environments such as those using the MDS600 use drive bay zoning.
• Switch port zone groups—Group together one or more SAS ports on the switch. Server bays assigned
this type of zone group have access to the controller enclosures or tape devices connected to the ports
included in the zone. Tape environments and shared storage environments such as those using the
MSA2000sa use switch port zoning. All tape drives in a tape device will be accessible to any server
that has access to the zone group. All LUNs in the controller enclosure will be accessible to the assigned
servers, unless controlled through the storage management utility for the controller enclosure.
As shown in the following table, configuration (zoning type) procedures are the same for shared SAS storage
enclosures and tape devices, but differ for zoned SAS storage enclosures:
Zoning typeComponent
Switch portShared SAS storage enclosures
Drive bayZoned SAS storage enclosures
Switch portTape devices
IMPORTANT: When assigning zone groups to servers, restrictions apply. The zone groups must be
associated with external storage enclosures that are connected to switch ports that are associated with those
server device bays. For more information, see “Zoning requirements and device mappings” (page 7).
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