smart zoning on cisco

We were using traditional single initiator signal target zoning prior to enabling Smart Zoning. My steps were something like:

1. Enable Smart Zoning on the VSAN I was using: zone smart-zoning enable vsan
2. Next I wanted to make sure all my traditional zoning didn't have any problems,  which i'm not sure was needed but I was being ultra cautious. So I had to disable Smart Zoning on each zone separately, but I automated it.  You diable it by going into the zone (zone name vsan ) and doing "no attribute disable-smart-zoning".
3. Next I picked some test zones to convert to Smart Zones,  I picked traditional zones and didn't add members - I just wanted to validate my zones actually worked as Smart Zones.  So I just re-enabeld the zone for Smart Zone.
4. Next I needed to modify the selected zones to identify each members as either an initiator or target.  Cisco providers a conversion for the zone: "zone convert smart-zoning zone name vsan ".
5. After some testing I decided to make a new Smart Zone for one of my clusters. I thought about converting an existing zone and adding the member,  but I wanted to differentiate zones via naming convention. I'm big into aliases,  so I made my zone:
   • conf t
   • zone name zSC_ESXGeneral_3e1
   • member device-alias vmax_3e1_devalias target
   • member device-alias esxhost1 init
   • member device-alias esxhost2 init
   • member device-alias esxhost2 init
6. Added it to the Zoneset, removed the other zone from the Zoneset, and activated and distributed.
7. Verified the hosts still had the access needed.

It was pretty easy,  and zoning is now so much easier.  I just add a member to existing zones. I don't see a whole lot of information on Smart Zoning on the web,  I guess i'll have to write a blog post...

thank you Mark, i found this glossy online but it does not go into a lot of details

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/ps4159/ps6409/ps5987/at_a_glance_c45-708533.pdf

one thing that caught my eye was requirements for "Smart zoning cannot be enabled if the fabric contains third-party switches". I know you have HP Flex modules, they are running in AG mode essentially ? I have some MDS 9124e in NPV mode and Brocade 4024 in AG mode (all are embedded into HP C-Class enclosures) connected to my MDS 9513s. Not sure if NPV/AG mode disqualifies them, do you know ?

I'm not sure about AG mode as i'm not a McBroData guy - however with the HP Flex modules they switch is not aware of them at all so they are not joined to the fabric and we have no problems. I can reach out to my Cisco guy for you if you like..

if you can ask your Cisco contact it would be awesome, i asked mine and so far he has not provided any definitive answers.

My Cisco rep replied saying all switches in the fabric must support smart zoning, but since npiv/access gateway is pass-through from the edge and all fabric is done at the core, it means smart zoning doesn't get to the edge and you sohuld be good to go..

One thing I am still confused about : If I currently have single-initiator-single-target zones - do I still have to convert them to smart zones ?

I'm only planning to create large zones with multiply tergets/initiators for my ESX cluster. Is it all or nothing or I can have both "traditional" and smart zones active at the same time ?

Burhan,

traditional and smart zones can happily co-exist in the same zoneset. I enabled smart zoning on an existing VSAN/zoneset where i had ~500 traditional zones, i had the option to leave them alone but i gave a task to one of my co-worker to convert traditional zones to smart zones (it was an online process, just tedious because of change control).