3 – Managing FabricsZoning3-16 59235-03 ASZoning ConceptsThe following zoning concepts provide some context for the zoning tasksdescribed in this section: Zones Aliases Zone Sets Zoning Database Configuring the Zoning DatabaseZonesZoning 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 cancommunicate with each other and transmit outside the zone, but cannot receiveinbound traffic from outside the zone. A port/device can be a member of up toeight zones whose combined membership does not exceed 64.Zoning is hardware enforced on a switch port if the sum of the logged-in devicesplus the devices zoned with devices on that port is 64 or less. If a port exceedsthis sum, that port behaves as a soft zone member. The port continues to behaveas a soft zone member until the sum of logged-in and zoned devices falls back to64, and the port is reset.A zone can be a component of more than one zone set. Several zone sets can bedefined for a fabric, but only one zone set can be active at one time. The activezone set determines the current fabric zoning.Membership in a zone can be defined by switch domain ID and port number,device Fibre Channel address identifier (FCID), or device World Wide Name(WWN). WWN entries define zone membership by the World Wide Name of theattached device. With this membership method, you can move WWNmember devices to different switch ports in different zones without having toedit the member entry as you would with a domain ID/port number member.Furthermore, unlike FCID members, WWN zone members are not affectedby changes in the fabric that could change the Fibre Channel address of anattached device. FCID entries define zone membership by the Fibre Channel address of theattached device. With this membership method you can replace a device onthe same port without having to edit the member entry as you would with aWWN member. Domain ID/Port number entries define zone membership by switch domainID and port number. All devices attached to the specified port becomemembers of the zone. The specified port must be an F_Port or an FL_Port.
