HP StorageWorks Fabric OS 6.x administrator guide (5697-7344, March 2008)

490 Implementing an interoperable fabric
• Brocade switches connected to McDATA switches receive the effective configuration when a zone
merge occurs. (McDATA only has an effective zone configuration and discards the defined zone
configuration when it sends merge information to the Brocade switch.) However, a zone update sends
the defined and effective configuration to all switches in the fabric.
• Use the cfgsaveactivetodefined command to move the effective configuration to the defined
configuration database.
• Legacy McDATA switches do not support the Defined Database or merge propagation.
• Cfgsize checks the maximum available size and the currently saved size of the zoning configuration.
If you believe you are approaching the maximum, you can save a partially completed zoning
configuration and re-issue the cfgSize command to determine the remaining space.
• Supports fabric-wide activation of zone configurations.
• New CLI command cfgmcdtmode to activate and deactivate McDATA Default and Safe Zoning
features.
• Allows Domain Port number zoning. Zone configurations that use either physical port numbers or port
IDs are supported.
• Zone database is managed on the EFCM Management Server.
• New cfgsaveactivetodefined command moves the current effective configuration to the Defined
database.
• Cfgsave only saves the Defined Database on the local switch; Defined Database distribution is not
supported.
Zone name restrictions
The name field must contain the ASCII characters that actually specify the name, not including any required
fill bytes. Names must follow these rules:
• Length must be between 1 and 64 characters.
• All characters must be 7-bit ASCII.
• The first character must be a letter, which can be either upper case (A-Z) or lower case (a-z).
• Any character other than the first character must be lower case (a-z), upper case (A-Z), a single-digit
number (0-9), dash (-), or underscore (_).
• McDATA Fabric mode allows the characters dash (-), caret (^) and dollar sign ($) in zone names.
Activating zones in McDATA Fabric mode
Activating zones mean creating zone configurations on legacy McDATA switches. McDATA Default Zone
and McDATA Safe Zone replace Brocade Default zoning. You can activate McDATA Default Zone or
McDATA Safe Zone, but not both. Activating the default zone enables any device in the default zone to see
any other device in the default zone. If the default zone is disabled and no zones are active, then devices
connected to the switch are unable to communicate.
Default zone
A default zone consists of all devices that are not members of a zone in a currently enabled (active) zone
set. If a zone set is active, then all connected devices that are not included in at least one of the zones in
the active zone set are included in the default zone. You can enable or disable the default zone separately
from the active zone set. If no zone set is enabled, then all devices are considered to be in the default
zone.
Default zoning adds devices not explicitly zoned to a default “catch-all” zone in M-EOS 9.6.2 Fabrics.
When a device is added to a configured zone, it is automatically removed from the default zone. Default
zoning is fabric-wide and is exchanged during E_Port initialization between adjacent switches. After the
E_Port initialization, if zoning is changed, the update is propagated throughout the fabric through a
standard zone update.