Q-Logic 59096-04 Manuel D’Utilisation

3 – Planning

Device Access

3-2

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Consider device access needs within the fabric. Access is controlled by the use of 
zoning. Some zoning strategies include the following:
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Separate devices by operating system.

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Separate devices that have no need to communicate with other devices in 
the fabric or have classified data.

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Separate devices into department, administrative, or other functional group.

„

Reserve a path and its bandwidth from one port to another.

Zoning 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 can 
communicate with each other and transmit outside the zone, but cannot receive 
inbound traffic from outside the zone. A port/device can be a member of up to 
eight zones whose combined membership does not exceed 64.

Zoning is hardware enforced on a switch port if the sum of the logged-in devices 
plus the devices zoned with devices on that port is 64 or less. If a port exceeds 
this sum, that port behaves as a soft zone member. The port continues to behave 
as a soft zone member until the sum of logged-in and zoned devices falls back to 
64, and the port is reset.

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.