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3 – Planning Device Access
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3.2
Device Access
Consider device access needs within the fabric. Access is controlled by the use of zoning. Some zoning strategies include the following:
Separate devices by operating system.
Separate devices that have no need to communicate with other devices in the fabric or have classified data.
Separate devices into department, administrative, or other functional group.
Reserve a path and its bandwidth from one port to another.
Zoning divides the fabric for purposes of controlling discovery and inbound traffic. A zone is a named group of ports or devices. Members of the same zone can communicate with each other and transmit outside the zone, but cannot receive inbound traffic from outside the zone. A port/device can be a member of up to eight zones whose combined membership does not exceed 64.
Zoning is hardware enforced on a switch port if the sum of the
A zone can be a component 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.