Brocade Fabric Manager Administrator's Guide v6.1.0 (53-10000610-02, June 2008)

Fabric Manager Administrator’s Guide 221

53-10000610-02

Chapter

Zone Management

In this chapter

•Introduction to zoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

•Offline zone management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

•Zone management with Web Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

Introduction to zoning

Zoning enables you to partition your storage area network (SAN) into logical groups of devices that

can access each other. For example, you can partition your SAN into two zones, winzone and

unixzone, so that your Windows servers and storage do not interact with your UNIX servers and

storage.

Zones can be configured dynamically. They can vary in size, depending on the number of fabric

connected devices, and devices can belong to more than one zone. Because zone members can

access only other members of the same zone, a device not included in a zone is not available to

members of that zone.

When using a mixed fabric–that is, a fabric containing v4.x, v3.x and v2.x switches–you should use

the most advanced switches to perform zoning tasks.

When zone or Fabric Assist (FA) zone members are specified by fabric location (domain, area) only,

or by device name (node name or port WWN) only, then zone boundaries can be enforced at the

hardware level, and the zone is referred to as a “hard zone.”

When zone elements are specified by fabric location (domain, area) and other elements of the

same zone are specified by device name (node name or port WWN), zone enforcement depends on

name server lookups and the zone is referred to as a “soft zone.”

For more specific information about zoning concepts, see the Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide.

Fabric Manager allows you to manage the zone database of a fabric directly or by using an offline

copy of the live zone database. You can also use Web Tools to manage the live zone database but

not the offline zone database.

NOTE

If you plan to add a switch to a fabric that uses zoning, first discover that switch with Fabric Manager

and run a merge check between that switch and the fabric to which you plan to add it. This check

identifies any zoning and configuration mismatches before you physically connect the switch. See

“Fabric merge check” on page 338 for information about running a merge check on the fabric.