Planning
Devices
When planning a fabric, consider the number of public devices and the anticipated demand. This determines the number of ports that are needed and in turn the number of switches. Consider how many and what types of switches are needed.
Consider the distribution of targets and initiators. An F_Port supports a single public device. An FL_Port can support up to 126 public devices in an arbitrated loop.
Device access
Consider device access needs within the fabric. Access is controlled by the use of zones and zone sets.
Some zoning strategies include:
■Grouping devices by operating system.
■Separating devices that have no need to communicate with other devices in the fabric or have classified data.
■Separating devices into department, administrative, or other functional group.
■Reserving a path and its bandwidth from one port to another.
A zone is a named group of devices that can communicate with each other. Membership in a zone can be defined by domain ID and switch port number, port Fibre Channel address, or by device worldwide name (WWN). Devices can communicate only with devices within the same zone. A zone can be a member of more than one zone set. Several zone sets can be defined for a fabric, but only one zone set can be active at one time. The active zone set determines the current fabric zoning.
A zoning database is maintained on each switch consisting of all inactive zone sets, the active zone set, all zones, aliases, and their membership. Refer to the HP StorageWorks 2/8q Fibre Channel Switch Management User Guide for more information about zoning.
The two types of zones are:
■Hard zones (Access Control Lists)
■Soft zones
Table 2: Zoning database limits
Zoning item | Description | Limit |
MaxZoneSets | Maximum number of zone sets. | 256 |
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|
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MaxZones | Maximum number of zones. | 256 |
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MaxAliases | Maximum number of aliases. | 256 |
|
|
|
MaxTotalMembers | Maximum number of zone and alias members | 2000 |
| that can be stored in the switch’s zoning |
|
| database. |
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22 | HP StorageWorks 2/8q Fibre Channel Switch Installation Guide |