Administering zones, Zoning overview, Example zoning topology – Brocade Network OS Administrator’s Guide v4.1.1 User Manual
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Administering Zones
Zoning overview
Zoning is a fabric-based service that enables you to partition your network into logical groups of devices
that can access each other and prevent access from outside the group. Grouping devices into zones in
this manner not only provides security, but also relieves the network from Registered State Change
Notification (RSCN) storms that occur when too many native FCoE devices attempt to communicate
with one another.
You can use zoning to partition your network in many ways. For example, you can partition your
network into two zones, winzone and unixzone, so that your Windows servers and storage do not
interact with your UNIX servers and storage. You can use zones to logically consolidate equipment for
efficiency or to facilitate time-sensitive functions; for example, you can create a temporary zone to back
up nonmember devices.
A device in a zone can communicate only with other devices connected to the fabric within the same
zone. A device not included in the zone is not available to members of that zone. When zoning is
enabled, devices that are not included in any zone configuration are inaccessible to all other devices in
the fabric.
Zones can be configured dynamically. They can vary in size, depending on the number of fabric-
connected devices, and devices can belong to more than one zone.
Example zoning topology
Consider the following figure, which shows three configured zones: Red, Green, and Blue. In this figure
the following is true:
• Server 1 can communicate only with the Storage 1 device.
• Server 2 can communicate only with the RAID and Storage 2 devices.
• Server 3 can communicate with the RAID and Storage 1 devices.
• The Storage 3 is not assigned to a zone; no other zoned fabric device can access it.
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