What is zoneing in san switch?

[seenivasan]

Dear Team,

What is zoneing in san switch?explain briefly?

[Steven Clementi]

Zoning is how you tell which devices in your SAN can talk to each other.

Without zoning, a fabric is like a big SCSI bus. What happens when there is a SCSI Bus reset? or a failure on the bus? or frequent LIP errors?

If 1 server is causing problems on the bus... or some device (like a tape drive lets say)... without zoning, ALL of your other devices will experience issues due to the one device having problems.

With zoning in place, only those devices "zoned" to see that device will be effected.


Steven

[seenivasan]

Dear ,

What is the use of Zoning?Any advantages?or any features available?

[Steven Clementi · Accepted solution]

"What is the use of Zoning?Any advantages?or any features available?"

Better security, control and performance on your SAN.

Zoning does not give you any "features". It is just a method of stopping issues that can/will crop up in a SAN (without zoning).

Using my example...

"If 1 server is causing problems on the bus... or some device (like a tape drive lets say)... without zoning, ALL of your other devices will experience issues due to the one device having problems.

With zoning in place, only those devices "zoned" to see that device will be effected."

Lets say you have 2 server of a Linux variety. Server 1 is operating just fine, but server 2's HBA is faulty and has an intermittent connection that happens very often.

Every time the port goes up or down, an entry is placed in the log on that local server. If you have no zoning in place, server 1 would ALSO see the port going up and down... and potentially place entries in ITS local logs.

Example 2:

Server 1 is a Windows Server, Server 2 is a older unix type server and you have a tape library.

The tape library has a faulty nsr port. (Same deal it goes up and down occasionally). The Windows server has a Plug and Play manager and will handle the situation gracefully. The older OS on server 2 might not be able to handle SCSI bus resets and the disappearing/re-appearing of the device(s) consistantly.. so it always reboots and/or kernel faults. With zoning, you could eliminate the issue by not allowing that server to even see the device.

Example 3:

You have 1 Backup Media Server and several other servers (File, mail, sql, etc). You only want the backup server to handle Tape devices. You need zoning so that the other servers don't see the library.


Steven

[seenivasan]

Dear Thanks.Now i m very clear.

[Jason Ng Teng Po]

Hi Steven Clementi

Do you have any HP document that says that if I don't zone the san switch...ALL of our other devices will experience issues due to the one device having problems?

I need this document to show to my customer.

Appreciate it if you can share the document if you have or know.

[Torsten.]

This is a fact.


Study the SAN design Guide available from hp.com - this has everything you need.

[Steven Clementi]

My post was based mainly on troubleshooting experience over the past 11 years working with Storage Area Networks as well as understanding SAN Design "Rules" for different storage products.

The SAN Design Guide is a good starting point for any "proof" to justify a situation to a customer.


" http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual&locale=en_US&docIndexId=179911&taskId=101&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=406734 "