Zoning

Question

Hi

A quick question on fibre zoning devices

What is the best approach to initiator and target

i know only a single initiator in a zone and not to mix tape and disk in zones and to dedicate hba port to either disk or tape not both i.e. in multiple zones

my questions are rather to clear up a remark by a EMC engineer in regards to zoning disks

his advice was to create separate zones for access to different SAN disk i.e. two VNX5400s - a server needs to access both - dont place the targets (controller ports) in same zone so create separate zone for each with same initiator (HBA) and then single initiator in each

is this correct?

Secondly to zone a tape library with multiple drives - is there any problem grouping the targets into single zone? i.e. any problems or performance hits with this approach - so initiator (hba in server) and four targets for four drives in same zone - or should it be a zone for each drive?

SteveK821 · Answer

I would agree that you should put each VNX in separate zones, i.e.

Zone1: HBA + VNX Ports from VNX-A

Zone2: HBA + VNX Ports from VNX-B

Why? VNX ports should only see each other for replication (MirrorView or SANcopy). VNX ports can be initiators and targets. MirrorView ports are fixed on a VNX, but any other VNX ports can be used in SANcopy. So if you have ports from two different VNX systems in the same zone, then they can log in to each other. If you want to be really granular you can use Single-Initiator/Single-Target zoning, where each zone only has 2 members: the HBA and one VNX port. It means you need to create a lot of zones, but if you use command line you can easily script it (create all the commands in a text file, then just copy/paste into Putty)

I have never seen any problems with all Tape devices in a single zone, as long as you stick to single-initiator zoning.

Regards,

Stephen

dynamox · Answer

Using Cisco MDS, if yes SmartZoning enabled ?

VNX

Zoning

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