HP AE370A - Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch 4/12, Administrator'S Manual

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Fabric OS 5.2.x administrator guide 127
7 Managing administrative domains
This chapter describes the concepts and procedures for using the administrative domain feature introduced
in Fabric OS 5.2.x and contains the following topics:
About administrative domains
An
Administrative Domain
(Admin Domain or AD) is a logical grouping of fabric elements that defines
what switches, ports, and devices you can view and modify. An Admin Domain is a filtered administrative
view of the fabric.
NOTE: If you do not implement Admin Domains, the feature has no impact on users and you do not need
to learn how to use this functionality.
Admin Domains permit access to a configured set of users. Using Admin Domains, you can partition the
fabric into logical groups and allocate administration of these groups to different user accounts so that
these accounts manage only the Admin Domains assigned to them and do not make changes to the rest of
the fabric.
For example, you can put all the devices in a particular department in the same Admin Domain for ease of
managing those devices. If you have remote sites, you could put the resources in the remote site in an
Admin Domain and assign the remote site administrator to manage those resources.
You set up zones to define which devices and hosts can communicate with each other; you set up Admin
Domains to define which users can manage which devices, hosts, and switches.
You can have up to 256 Admin Domains in a fabric (254 user-defined and 2 system-defined), numbered
from 0 through 255. Admin Domains are designated by a name and a number. This document refers to
specific Admin Domains using the format “AD
n
” where
n
is a number between 0 and 255.
NOTE: Do not confuse an
Admin Domain number
with the
domain ID of a switch
. They are two different
identifiers.
Before using the procedures described in this chapter, you should become familiar with the Admin Domain
concepts described in the following sections.
An “AD-aware switch” is a switch that runs Fabric OS 5.2.x or higher (on both CPs, if a dual CP switch)
and has a valid Advanced Zoning license.
An “AD-unaware switch” is a switch that is running:
• Fabric OS 5.1.x or lower
• Fabric OS 5.2.x or higher but does not have an Advanced Zoning license
• Fabric OS 5.2.x or higher on one CP but Fabric OS 5.1.x or lower on the other (for dual-CP switches)
and is in HA_Sync
Figure 2 on page 128 shows a fabric with two Admin Domains: AD1 and AD2.