MPR San Switches configuration

[Jacky Wing]

I have a Meta SAN installation.
first site: 1 MPRs , 2 switches and one EVA. I've set up the SAN Switches exactly the same but with a different domain ID.
Sw 1: Domain ID 1
Sw 2: Domain ID 2
MPR: Domain ID 3

Now in my MPR i only see the first switch, on the first switch I only see the MPR. the second switch does not show up in the MPR and does not show up in the first switch. If I check the ports on the MPR and the switch I see that it is: (segmented) (zone conflict). I don't see what have I done wrong. Do you have any idea.

[Denver Osborn]

What does 'licenseshow' display for the fabric license? is it 2 domain fabric or full fabric?

-denver

[Jacky Wing]

License show output:

Web license
Zoning license
Fabric license

I don't have any idea if it is only 2 domain fabric or full fabric.

[Denver Osborn · Accepted solution]

It's full fabric. Would you mind posting the switchshow output?

-denver

[Jacky Wing]

Thank you man, well after you i checked the switch show command. I recognized that the second switch was taking the role of principale which makes it unable to connect to the MPR. Anyway after couple of disable enable, now i saw everything. But I had to clear the zoning configuration on both switches to do that. I am going to try to reput the zoning to see what will happen.

[Jacky Wing]

Thank you man, well after you i checked the switch show command. I recognized that the second switch was taking the role of principale which makes it unable to connect to the MPR. Anyway after couple of disable enable, now i saw everything. But I had to clear the zoning configuration on both switches to do that. I am going to try to reput the zoning to see what will happen.

Do you have any ideas about the zoning?

[Jacky Wing]

Now my EVA is not visible. I know the problem is with zoning. I have:

zone 1 on switch 1 to have my SMA with my EVA controllers.
zone 2 on switch 2 to have my SMA with my EVA controllers.
zone 3 on mpr to have my first san switch with my second san switch.

Whenever I try to enable a configuration, the same configuration is enabled on the 3 systems I have. how should I configure this zoning?

[Denver Osborn]

When you enable the zone config it will be for the entire fabric, so you must consider all ports/hosts for all the switches in the fabric.

I'm assuming this is a new fabric setup and not in production yet. How many hosts and storage ports are to be zoned? What type of zoning do you prefer? port based or wwn zoning?

-denver

[Jacky Wing]

Well I have around 30 hosts with 2 storages, 4 switches and 2 MPs.

I usually prefer hard zoning. since changing a FC card will not create a big deal and nobody should be playing with the FC cables places. I also usualy zone each host with the EVA directly it is better like this and minimizes errors.
I once enabled hard and soft zoning at the same time, very secure but also can create problems.
What do you think?

[Uwe Zessin]

The old rule that "WWN-based" zoning is "hard" is no longer true. Modern switches can program the ASICs according to WWN data. They only need to revert to "soft" zoning (based on the name server), when the data becomes too complex.

[Jacky Wing]

So what r you saying?
should I configure zoning based on WWN and on ports. Or on WWN only. Or on Ports only. Or no zoning at all. I have only windows in my SAN.

[Uwe Zessin]

I do pure WWN-based zoning using alias names. The added bonus is documentation in the switches as I use self-explaning names ;-)

There are claims that a port-based zoning is more safe, because one could spoof WWNs.

Well, if you use port-based zoning, you can still connect to a storage array if the compromised server happens to be in an appropriate zone. And most SAN-connected servers do have access to storage arrays anyway.

As the LUN-masking is WWN-based as well, it cannot protect from WWN-spoofing either.

[Jacky Wing]

Thank you guys.