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McDATA 4314 Fibre Channel Switch Module Installation Guide
2-2
Device Access
Device Access
Consider device access needs within the fabric. Access is controlled by the use
of zones and zone sets. Some zoning strategies include the following:
• Group devices by operating system.
• Separate devices that have no need to communicate with other devices in
the fabric or have classified data.
• Separate devices into department, administrative, or other functional
group.
• Reserve a path and its bandwidth from one port to another.
A zone is a named group of devices that can communicate with each other.
Membership in a zone can be defined by switch module domain ID and port
number, port Fibre Channel address, or by device worldwide name (WWN).
Devices can communicate only with devices within the same zone. The
switch module supports both hard and soft zones. A zone can be a member 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.
A zoning database is maintained on each switch module consisting of all
inactive zone sets, the active zone set, all zones, aliases, and their
membership. Table 2-1 describes the zoning database limits, excluding the
active zone set. Refer to the EFCM Basic Management Guide for more
information about zoning.
Soft Zones
Soft zoning divides the fabric for purposes of controlling device discovery.
Devices in the same soft zone automatically discover and communicate freely
with all other members of the same zone. The soft zone boundary is not
Table 2-1. Zoning Database Limits
Limit Description
MaxZoneSets Maximum number of zone sets (256).
MaxZones Maximum number of zones (2000).
MaxAliases Maximum number of aliases (2500).
MaxTotalMembers Maximum number of zone and alias members (10000) that can be
stored in the switch module’s zoning database.
MaxZonesInZoneSets Maximum number of zones that are components of zone sets
(2000), excluding the orphan zone set, that can be stored in the
switch module’s zoning database. Each instance of a zone in a
zone set counts toward this maximum.
MaxMembersPerZone Maximum number of members in a zone (2000)
MaxMembersPerAlias Maximum number of members in an alias (2000)