Cisco MDS 9000 Series Configuration Guide

• Zones can vary in size.
• Devices can belong to more than one zone.
• A zoneset consists of one or more zones.
• A zoneset can be activated or deactivated as a single entity across all switches in the fabric.
• Only one zoneset can be activated at any time.
• A zone can be a member of more than one zoneset.
• An MDS switch can have a maximum of 1000 zonesets.
• Zoning can be administered from any switch in the fabric.
• When you activate a zone (from any switch), all switches in the fabric receive the active zoneset.
Additionally, full zone sets are distributed to all switches in the fabric, if this feature is enabled in
the source switch.
• If a new switch is added to an existing fabric, zone sets are acquired by the new switch.
• Zone changes can be configured nondisruptively. New zones and zone sets can be activated without
interrupting traffic on unaffected ports or devices.
• Zone membership criteria is based mainly on WWNs or FC IDs.
• Port world wide name (pWWN)—Specifies the pWWN of an N port attached to the switch as a
member of the zone.
• Fabric pWWN—Specifies the WWN of the fabric port (switch port’s WWN). This membership is
also referred to as port-based zoning.
• FC ID—Specifies the FC ID of an N port attached to the switch as a member of the zone.
• Interface and switch WWN (sWWN)—Specifies the interface of a switch identified by the sWWN.
This membership is also referred to as interface-based zoning.
• Interface and domain ID—Specifies the interface of a switch identified by the domain ID.
• Domain ID and port number—Specifies the domain ID of an MDS domain and additionally specifies
a port belonging to a non-Cisco switch.
• IPv4 address—Specifies the IPv4 address (and optionally the subnet mask) of an attached device.
• IPv6 address—The IPv6 address of an attached device in 128 bits in colon(:)-separated hexadecimal
format.
• Symbolic-nodename—Specifies the member symbolic node name. The maximum length is 240
characters.
• Default zone membership includes all ports or WWNs that do not have a specific membership association.
Access between default zone members is controlled by the default zone policy.
Cisco MDS 9000 Series Fabric Configuration Guide, Release 8.x
38
Configuring and Managing Zones
About Zoning

Cisco MDS 9000 Series Specifications

General

Category	Switch
Operating System	Cisco NX-OS
Ports	Varies by model
Protocols	Fibre Channel (FC), Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP), iSCSI
Redundancy	Redundant supervisors, power supplies, and fans
Management	Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM), CLI, SNMP
Virtualization Support	VSANs (Virtual SANs)
Security Features	Fibre Channel Security Protocol (FC-SP)
Hot Swappable Components	power supplies, fans
Power Supply Options	AC and DC options available