HP Surestore 6164 Switch - Manual (Page 15)

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USING ZONING
This chapter explains both the concept of zoning and how to use Zoning to
partition a fabric into logical groupings of devices.
Understanding Zoning
A zone is a group of fabric-connected devices arranged into a specified
grouping. Any device connected to a fabric can be included in one or more
zones. Devices within a zone possess an awareness of other devices within
the same zone; they are not aware of devices outside of their zone.
Therefore, if zoning is enabled, any device not in a zone cannot
communicate with any other device.
Zone members (ports, WWNs, or aliases) are grouped into a zone; in turn,
zones are grouped in a zone configuration (a collection of zones). Zones
can overlap; that is, a device can belong to more than one zone, and a fabric
can consist of multiple zones. A zone configuration can include both hard
and soft zones and there can be any number of zone configurations resident
on a switch; however only one configuration can be active, that is enabled,
at a time. Because the number of zones allowable is limited only by
memory usage, the maximum number is virtually limitless.