aliascreate, zonecreate are not creating anything

the result of alicreate "ESXI02_p1", "10:00:00:10:9b:33:81:81" is null

this is on 8.0 as both Admin and Root.

• perform an alishow before the command
• run the alicreate
• perform an alishow after the command = no change

additionally

• run alicreate "alias" "wwn"
• run zonecreate "alias" "members"
• run cfgadd "cfg" "zonealias"
• run cfgsave "cfg"
• run cfgenable - tells me the zone "zonealias" doesn't exist

In both Root and Admin

do I have to "switchdisable" first? I don't have that captured in any of my previous putty logs.