Cisco Systems MDS 9000 Zone Implementation , Zone Configuration

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Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fabric Manager Configuration Guide

OL-6965-03, Cisco MDS SAN-OS Release 2.x

Chapter 15 Zone Configuration

Zoning Features

A zone set can be activated or deactivated as a single entity across all switches in the fabric. Only one

zone set can be activated at any time. If zoning is not activated, all devices are members of the default

zone. If zoning is activated, any device that is not in an active zone (a zone that is part of an active zone

set) is a member of the default zone.

Zoning can be administered from any switch in the fabric. When you activate a zone (from any switch),

all switches in the fabric receive the active zone set. Additionally, full zone sets are distributed to all

switches in the fabric, if this feature is enabled in the source switch.

If a new switch is added to an existing fabric, zone sets are acquired by the new switch.

Zone changes can be configured nondisruptively. New zones and zone sets can be activated without

interrupting traffic on unaffected ports or devices.

Default zone membership includes all ports or WWNs that do not have a specific membership

association. Access between default zone members is controlled by the default zone policy.

Zone Implementation

All switches running Cisco MDS SAN-OS automatically support the following basic zone features (no

additional configuration is required):

•Zones are contained in a VSAN.

•Only active zone sets are distributed.

•Unzoned devices cannot access each other.

•A zone or zone set with the same name can exist in each VSAN.

•Each VSAN has a full database and an active database.

•Active zone sets cannot be changed, without activating a full zone database.

•Active zone sets are preserved across switch reboots.

•Changes to the full database must be explicitly saved.

•Zone reactivation (a zone set is active and you activate another zone set) does not disrupt existing

traffic.

If required, you can additionally configure the following zone features:

•Propagate full zone sets to all switches on a per VSAN basis.

•Change the default policy for unzoned members.

•Interoperate with other vendors by configuring a VSAN in the interop mode. You can also configure

one VSAN in the interop mode and another VSAN in the basic mode in the same switch without

disrupting each other

•Bring E ports out of isolation.

A zone can be configured using one of the following types in Cisco MDS SAN-OS to assign members:

•pWWN—The WWN of the N or NL port in hex format (for example, 10:00:00:23:45:67:89:ab).