Need Zoning material

Hi - this is a pretty broad question! Are you studying for one of the SAN exams?

Zoning is the only way to restrict access for storage to all the host. There are two type of Zoning which is popular in the industry the third type which is known as Broadcast Zoning.

1)     Soft Zoning: It uses the name server to enforce zoning. The World Wide Name (WWN) of the elements enforces the configuration policy.

Advantages:

Administrators can move devices to different switch ports without manually reconfiguring zoning.

Disadvantages:

Devices might be able to spoof the WWN and access otherwise restricted resources.
Device WWN changes, such as the installation of a new Host Bus Adapter (HBA) card, require policy modifications, Because the switch does not control data transfers, it cannot prevent incompatible HBA devices from bypassing the Name Server and talking directly to hosts.

2)     Hard Zoning: Hard Zoning uses the physical fabric port number of a switch to create zones and enforce the policy.

Advantages:

Easier to create and manage than a long list of element WWNs.
Switch hardware enforces data transfers and ensures that no traffic goes between unauthorized zone members.
Stronger enforcement of the policy (assuming physical security on the switch is well established).

Disadvantages:
Moving devices to different switch ports requires policy modifications.

3)     Broadcast Zoning: · Broadcast Zoning has many unique characteristics:
This traffic allows only one broadcast zone per fabric.
It isolates broadcast traffic.
It is hardware-enforced.

Hi Rajshekhar.

Could you please specify, what material you looking for..?? And for which Vendor (Cisco or Brocad)

if you are looking for any command then I can provide you command of Cisco, as I use the same.

Please specify..

Thanks

Rajeev.

Adding info ...

4. Hybrid Zonning: Hard Zonning + Soft Zonning.

The question of zoning method should be considered after the zoning plan is worked out, because the kind of zones you need will have a major impact on your choice of method. For example, if you need a high level of security and you're unlikely to be moving devices, you will probably want to use hard zoning only. If flexibility is your goal, you will be better off using soft zoning.

About the WWN, I suggest use "World Wide Port Name" because the wwpn is unique, like a MAC Address. This method avoids issues when you have an HBA Dual Port.

HBA Dual Port: Have the same WWN but diferents WWPN's

Regards.  Gus Romero

I would like to disagree with Bashanta, Soft zoning does not mean wwn based zoning and hard zoning does not mean port based zoning. In hard zoning you can still create zones based on just WWns. We can also create based on WWpns. And finally we can also create hard zones based on domain, index. The "hard" in hard zoning means that the zone is enforced at the hardware level by the switch ASICs.

I dont know if anyone actually implements soft zoning these days. Infact I dont know how one would go about creating a soft zone. If someone knows that please enlighten us.