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Fibre Channel zones are used to segment the fabric to restrict access. A zone contains paths between initiators (server HBAs) and targets (storage array front-end ports). Either physical ports (port zoning) on the Fibre Channel switches or the WWNs (name zoning) of the end devices can be used in zoning. It is recommended to use name zoning because it offers better flexibility. With name zoning, server HBAs and storage array ports are not tied to specific physical ports on the switch.
Zoning Fibre Channel switches for Linux hosts is essentially no different than zoning any other hosts to the ME4 Series array.
The following list includes key zoning rules and recommendations.
Fabrics (dual-switch configuration) | FC HBA port (dual-port HBA configuration) | ME4 Series FC ports | |
All-FC port configuration | FC/iSCSI port configuration | ||
Fabric one zone | Port 0 | A0, B0, A2, B2 | A0, B0* |
Fabric two zone | Port 1 | A1, B1, A3, B3 | A1, B1* |
*In an FC/iSCSI configuration, only ports A0, A1, B0, and B1 are available. Ports A2, A3, B2, and B3 are reserved for iSCSI.
Note: Dell Technologies recommends using name zoning and creating single-initiator, multiple-target zones.
When creating a host object on the ME4 Series array, the host FC WWNs are required. Use the following procedure to identify the HBA WWNs on the Linux host. The fcshow.sh bash shell script is provided as an example to extract useful information about the host HBA information.
# cat fcshow.sh
printf "%-10s %-20s %-10s %-s\n" "Host-Port" "WWN" "State" "Speed"
printf "%50s\n" |tr ' ' -
ls -1d /sys/class/fc_host/host* | while read host
do
(echo ${host##*/}: ; cat $host/port_name $host/port_state $host/speed)| xargs -n 5 printf "%-10s %-20s %-10s %s %s\n"
done
# bash fcshow.sh
Host-Port WWN State Speed
--------------------------------------------------
host14: 0x2001000e1ec2ada0 Online 16 Gbit
host15: 0x2001000e1ec2ada1 Online 16 Gbit
host16: 0x2001000e1ec2d342 Online 16 Gbit
host17: 0x2001000e1ec2d343 Online 16 Gbit
host18: 0x2001000e1e09b7b8 Online 16 Gbit
host19: 0x2001000e1e09b7b9 Online 16 Gbit
Locate the WWN information in the ME Storage Manager or by running the interactive CLI command. See the ME4 Series CLI Guide for a detailed explanation of all available CLI commands.
ssh manage@IP-address
# show ports detail
Ports Media Target ID Status Speed(A) Health Reason Action
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A0 FC(P) 207000c0fff03b17 Up 16Gb OK
Topo(C) PID SFP Status Part Number Supported Speeds
------------------------------------------------------------------
PTP N/A OK FTLF8529P3BCV-1D 4G,8G,16G