How is Port Zoning done?

One word of caution about port zoning and one of the main reasons it is not very popular. If you do not control physical access to your switches you need to be very careful because anyone plugging anything into a given port that is zoned to storage will get access to that storage. This could cause intentional or more likely unintentional data corruption if someone switched ports or you forget to clean storage from a port after a host is decommisioned.

The nice thing about port zoning is that you never have to worry about changing zoning/masking if an HBA fails or a server is upgraded to new hardware like you do with WWN zoning.

I have yet to run across anyone that is doing port zoning - be curious to see if anyone replies that they are doing it.

As far as the how to do port zoning - that depends on what tool you use to do your zoning. Do you use ECC, Fabric Manager, or the Cisco command line? I believe all 3 methods support doing WWN or Port zoning.

Uhm... masking is based on wwpn and some lun, so IMHO you need to change masking info after an HBA replacement !

Hmmmm I think it depends on the fact you are an EMC customer and you trust EMC, don't you ??

EMC strongly recomends WWN zoning. Maybe some other vendor prefer some other way of doing zones .. If you think to HPUX you can easily understand why HP prefers port zoning at their customer sites At least here in Italy I had the "opportunity" to work with customers following HP advices. They all use port zoning. They have multiple initiators in the same zone. Sometime they use even DEFAULT ZONING!!! ...

It depends on who you trust. If you trust EMC you have WWN zoning. If you trust someone else, you may have different zoning

YMMV obviously

I think you are combining two separate concepts: switch zoning and array lun masking.

With a switch there are a variety of ways to implement zones with the end goal being to make a host hba port visible to the storage array port(s).

Regardless of the type of zoning used, the pwwn of the hba will be visible to the array once the zoning is in place and active. This then allows you to use whatever masking process the array requires to present luns to the host.

Thanks all.

Comparing port zoning with my current SAN setup(havin soft zoning) :

- The members of the zoning will be a hba and 2 storage .Is HBAs info(say WWN,FCID) irrelavent in this case?and how would you specify the new zone quoting 'this is the port I am talking about' ?

-And How would I do the masking ?
This is command which i know : symmask -sid xxx -wwn ........!!!!!
I guess wwn wont come in picture .if not what will come ?

Ohh ok

I thought I could stop using WWPNs once I start using port zoining :P

Nope

Ihi

---MHO port zoning refers to "connecting" physical switch ports to each other. It has nothing to do with wwpn or wwnn.
for example in a Brocade switch, you create a zone and select actual switch ports to be members of a zone. You can create aliases for phisical ports as well and add aliases to the zones...


just want to check my understanding..

so in port zoning we make the switch ports to talkk not bothred of what hba or the storage ports connected to themm... rite?

Right, but when you then go to your storage array, you will see the wwpn's again and you need to work with them.

That's why I love wwn zoning

I think that you are right .. The main idea behind zoning is to connect objects. When you plug your fibre from the host (or from the storage) to the switch, you create a path between the switch and an object. If you connect more then a single object (=more then a single fibre) to the switch, you have to create paths between different ports of the switch (or different objects plugged in the switch) if you want them to talk one each other. That's zoning. When you create zone you allow someone to talk to someone else.

Now you have to choose how to identify the objects that will talk one each other.

You can choose to "connect" two ports, or two objects (wwn) .. It's simply up to you (and up to who you trust) to choose between port zoning or wwn zoning Whatever you choose, you are allowing someone (the guys connected to a given set of ports or the guys identified by a given set of wwn) to talk one each other. That's the main concept behind zoning IMHO.

Hello,

There are many reasons for using WWPN zoning instead of Port zoning and Cisco is adding in many more reasons. If you use Storage Media Encryption (SME), for example, you have to use WWPN zoning or it won't work. All of Cisco's virtualization technology that I've seen uses WWPN zoning so if you want to be able to use it, you'll need to use it.

Thank you.