HP 8/20q, Cli Manual

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8/20q Fibre Channel Switch command line interface guide 73
6 Zoning configuration
This section describes the following tasks:
• Displaying zoning database information , page 73
• Configuring the zoning database , page 79
• Modifying the zoning database , page 81
• Saving the active and merged zone sets , page 81
• Resetting the zoning database , page 82
• Managing zone sets , page 82
• Managing zones , page 83
• Managing aliases , page 85
Access to devices within the fabric is controlled by zoning. Some zoning strategies are:
• Separating devices by operating system
• Separating devices that have no need to communicate with other devices in the fabric or have
classified data
• Separating devices into department, administrative, or other functional group
• Reserving 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.
Displaying zoning database information
A switch maintains three zoning databases:
• Non-volatile—This zoning database is permanent and contains all zone sets, zones, and aliases that
you create and save on a switch. The zone sets in the non-volatile zoning database are known as
configured zone sets.
• Volatile—This zoning database is temporary. This means it is not retained across switch resets. The
volatile zoning database can be the working copy of a zone set being edited or an active zone set
received from another switch. In the latter case, this is also known as the merged zone set.
• Active—This zoning database is the active zone set.
You can display the following information about the zoning database:
• Configured zone set information , page 74
• Active zone set information , page 75
• Merged zone set information , page 76
• Edited zone set information , page 76
• Zone set membership information , page 76
• Orphan zone information , page 77
• Alias and alias membership information , page 78
• Zoning modification history , page 78
• Zoning database limits , page 79