What is fabric zoning?
Fibre Channel zoning allows you to partition the Fibre Channel fabric into one or more zones. Each zone defines the set of Fibre Channel initiators and Fibre Channel targets that can communicate with each other in a VSAN. Zoning also enables you to set up access control between hosts and storage devices or user groups.
What is zoning in FC SAN?
Zoning in a SAN is a used to segment traffic between targets and initiators, or less formally workstations and storage. Zoning is generally used for security or performance benefits. Zoning can be set up through software, referred to as Soft Zoning or it can be set up through hardware, referred to as Hard Zoning.
What is the difference between LUN masking and zoning?
LUN masking takes place at either the host bus adapter (HBA) or storage controller, and restricts the hosts’ ability to access specific LUNs. LUN zoning generally takes place on storage-area network (SAN) switches and compartmentalises the SAN fabric, grouping hosts and storage arrays into zones.
What are types of zoning available in fabric switches?
There are two types of zones: soft and hard.
- Soft Zones. Soft zoning means that the switch will place WWNs of devices in a zone, and it doesn’t matter what port they’re connected to.
- Hard Zones. Hard zones are more like VLANs in the Ethernet world.
- Zoning Best Practices.
What is switch zoning?
Zoning is a procedure that takes place on the SAN fabric and ensures devices can only communicate with those that they need to. Masking takes place on storage arrays and ensures that only particular World Wide Names [WWNs] can communicate with LUNs on that array.
How to configure zoning on Brocade FC switches?
Configuring zoning on Brocade FC switches Search within this manualSearch all Support content Configuring zoning on Brocade FC switches You must assign the switch ports to separate zones to separate controller and storage traffic, one zone for the FC-VI ports and one for the storage ports.
Why do we need zones in brocade fabric?
The answer is, to be able to avoid unnecessary traffic between devices participating in fabric and to enhance security. By creating zones we are logically partitioning the fabric so that the communication happens only with the intended devices. Most popular vendors of storage networking are Brocade and Cisco.
How to zone a storage port in brocade switch?
Execute following command to check physical connectivity. If physical connection is proper it should give output with PID format address of port. Select to which storage port you want to zone. Switch_Name > zonecreate “SERVER_NAME_PORT_NO_storage_port”,”SERVER_NAME_PORT_NO; storage_port”
Why does brocade isolate zones to avoid RSCNs?
Brocade isolates these notifications to only the zones that require the update, so nodes that are unaffected by the fabric change do not receive the RSCN. This is important for non-disruptive fabric operations, because RSCNs have the potential to disrupt storage traffic.