Fabric Manager provides a number of features to help you perform zone control on your fabrics.
A zone is a logical grouping of switches, switch ports, and the devices attached to them in the fabric. Zones can span multiple switches, but they cannot span multiple fabrics. Ports within a zone can communicate with each other, but not with ports outside the zone. A single port can belong to multiple zones.
There are two types of zoning:
Hardware zoning is based on the physical port number.
Software zoning uses the Simple Name Server (SNS) that runs inside the fabric switch. It is based on the node WWN or port WWN of the members to be included in the zone. Software zoning allows you to create symbolic names for the zones and zone members.
A zone set is a collection of zones within a single fabric. Only one zone set can be active for a fabric. The zones in a zone set must belong to one fabric, they cannot extend across multiple fabrics.
Fabric Manager provides the following support for zones and zone sets: