Brocade Communications Systems IP250 user manual Zoning overview

	Chapter
Zoning	19

In this chapter

•Zoning overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 637

•Zone database size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 640

•Zoning configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 640

•Zoning administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661

Zoning overview

Zoning is a fabric-based service that enables you to partition your network into logical groups of devices that can access each other and prevent access from outside the group. Grouping devices into zones in this manner not only provides security, but also relieves the network from Registered State Change Notification (RSCN) storms that occur when too many native FCoE devices attempt to communicate with one another.

You can use zoning to partition your network in many ways. For example, you can partition your network into two zones, winzone and unixzone, so that your Windows servers and storage do not interact with your UNIX servers and storage. You can use zones to logically consolidate equipment for efficiency or to facilitate time-sensitive functions; for example, you can create a temporary zone to back up nonmember devices.

A device in a zone can communicate only with other devices connected to the fabric within the same zone. A device not included in the zone is not available to members of that zone. When zoning is enabled, devices that are not included in any zone configuration are inaccessible to all other devices in the fabric.

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.

Consider Figure 239, which shows configured zones, Red, Green, and Blue.

•Server 1 can communicate only with the Storage 1 device.

•Server 2 can communicate only with the RAID and Storage 2 devices.

•Server 3 can communicate with the RAID and Storage 1 devices.

•The Storage 3 device is not assigned to a zone; no other zoned fabric device can access it.

Brocade Network Advisor IP User Manual	637
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