CHAPTER
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31-1
Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fabric Manager Configuration Guide
OL-17256-03, Cisco MDS NX-OS Release 4.x
31
Distributing Device Alias Services
All switches in the Cisco MDS 9000 Family support Distributed Device Alias Services (device alias) on
a per-VSAN basis and on a fabric-wide basis. Device alias distribution allows you to move host bus
adapters (HBAs) between VSANs without manually reentering alias names.
This chapter includes the following sections:
• About Device Aliases, page 31-1
• About Device Alias Modes, page 31-1
• Device Alias Databases, page 31-4
• Legacy Zone Alias Conversion, page 31-7
• Device Alias Statistics Cleanup, page 31-8
• Default Settings, page 31-9
About Device Aliases
When the port WWN of a device must be specified to configure different features (zoning, QoS, port
security) in a Cisco MDS 9000 Family switch, you must assign the correct device name each time you
configure these features. An incorrect device name may cause unexpected results. You can avoid this
problem if you define a user-friendly name for a port WWN and use this name in all of the configuration
commands as required. These user-friendly names are referred to as device aliases in this chapter.
About Device Alias Modes
Device alias supports two modes: basic and enhanced mode.
• When device alias runs in the basic mode, all applications function like the applications on the 3.0
switches. When you configure the basic mode using device aliases, the application immediately
expands to pWWNs. This behavior continues until the mode is changed to enhanced.
• When device alias runs in the enhanced mode, all applications accept the device-alias configuration
in the native format. The applications store the device alias name in the configuration and distribute
it in the device alias format instead of expanding to pWWN. The applications track the device alias
database changes and take actions to enforce it.
A native device-alias configuration is not accepted in the interop mode VSAN. IVR zoneset activation
will fail in interop mode VSANs if the corresponding twilight zones being injected are native device
alias members.
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