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Zone management in interoperable fabrics 14
•Zoning using domain,port notation is allowed. Zone configurations that use either physical port
numbers or port IDs are supported.
•Zoning using domain,index notation is allowed only in McDATA Fabric mode (IM2) only, not
Open fabric mode (IM3).

Zone name restrictions

The name value must contain the ASCII characters that actually specify the name, not including any
required fill bytes. Names must follow these rules:
•Length must be between 1 and 64 characters.
•All characters must be 7-bit ASCII.
•The first character must be a letter, which can be either uppercase (A-Z) or lowercase (a-z).
•Any character other than the first character must be lowercase (a-z), uppercase (A-Z), a
single-digit number (0-9), or underscore ( _ ).
McDATA Fabric mode allows the characters dash ( - ), caret ( ^ ) and dollar sign ( $ ) in zone names.

Zoning modes

Activating zones creates zone configurations on legacy McDATA switches. McDATA default zone and
safe zone modes replace the Brocade default zoning mode. You can set McDATA default zone mode
or McDATA safe zone mode, but not both. Setting the default zone enables any device in the default
zone to see any other device in the default zone. If the default zone is disabled and no zones are
active, then devices connected to the switch are unable to communicate.

Default zoning mode

The default zoning mode controls device access if zoning is not implemented or if there is no
effective zone configuration. It adds devices not explicitly zoned to a default “catch-all” zone in
M-EOS fabrics. When a device is added to a configured zone, it is automatically removed from the
default zone. Default zoning is fabric-wide and is exchanged during E_Port initialization between
adjacent switches. After the E_Port initialization, if zoning is changed, the update is propagated
throughout the fabric through a standard zone update. There is a limit of 64 devices in the default
zone. Default zoning and safe zoning cannot be active at the same time. Default zoning and safe
zoning are not available in IM3.
ATTENTION
If you have fabric comprising of Fabric OS switches in IM2 mode, then the device limit in the default
zone is not software enforced.
Default zoning should be off, but there is no check that it is turned off. The configuration is reset. If
you have a defined or effective configuration and default zoning is on, when you disable the switch
and change to McDATA Open Fabric mode, you are informed that all configurations will be lost.
Responding “yes” puts the system in McDATA Open Fabric mode with default zoning and safe
zoning turned off.
This mode is not supported in interopmode 3. For details, see “Activating Default Zones” in Chapter
11, “Administering Advanced Zoning”.