59263-02 A 7-1
7 Zoning Configuration
This section describes the following tasks:
îš„ Displaying Zoning Database Information
îš„ Configuring the Zoning Database
îš„ Modifying the Zoning Database
îš„ Saving the Active and Merged Zone Sets
îš„ Resetting the Zoning Database
îš„ Managing Zone Sets
îš„ Managing Zones
îš„ Managing Aliases
Consider device access needs within the fabric. Access is controlled by the use of
zoning. Some zoning strategies include the following:
îš„ Separate devices by operating system.
îš„ Separate devices that have no need to communicate with other devices in
the fabric or have classified data.
îš„ Separate devices into department, administrative, or other functional group.
îš„ Reserve a path and its bandwidth from one port to another.
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.
Zoning divides the fabric for purposes of controlling discovery and inbound traffic.
Zoning is hardware-enforced only when a port/device is a member of no more
than eight zones whose combined membership does not exceed 64. If this
condition is not satisfied, that port behaves as a soft zone member. You can
assign ports/devices to a zone individually or as a group by creating an alias.
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.