# Zoning Overview

A zone is a named group of ports or devices that can communicate with each other. Zoning is available for all FC-SW-2 switches in the fabric. Zoning enables you to divide the ports and devices of the fabric into zones for more efficient and secure communication among functionally grouped nodes. Managing zones involves creating a zone and adding and removing member port/devices. Zone members can communicate only with members of the same zone. Zones can overlap; that is, a port or device can be a member of more than one zone. Membership in a zone can be defined by port number, device Fibre Channel address, or device world wide name.

SANbox with E_Ports Zoning

* Soft zone is the only zone type.

* No orphan zones or aliases are allowed.

* You can edit and deactivate an active zone set.

* The maximum number of zone sets is 4, and the maximum number of zones is 256.

* The maximum number of zone members allowed in the entire zoning system is 2000.

* The active zone set (only) is saved automatically to permanent memory.

* Zone merge is based on the FC-SW-2 specification.

SANbox2 Zoning

All zones that are not members of a zone set belong to the orphan zone set. The orphan zone set is saved on SANbox2 switches, but not on SANbox with E_Port switches.

* Orphan zones and aliases are allowed.

* You cannot edit an active zone set.

* The three types of zones are Soft, VPF (hard zone), and ACL (hard zone).

* The entire zoning database can be saved to either temporary or permanent memory.

* The zoning limits for a fabric are:

- Maximum number of zonesets is 256

- Maximum number of zones is 256

- Maximum number of zones per zone set is 256

- Maximum number of aliases is 256

- Maximum number of zoneset members in the zoning database is 1000

- Maximum number of members per zone is 2000

- Maximum number of members per aliases is 2000

- Maximum total number of members is 2000

Three types of SANbox2 zones are supported. The following zone types define increasing restrictive levels of communication:

1. Soft zoning

2. Access Control List (ACL) - hard zoning

3. Virtual Private Fabric (VPF) - hard zoning

SANbox2-64 Zoning

SANbox2-64 zoning functions identically to SANbox2 zoning, except that a VPF zone cannot extend beyond the ports of a single I/O blade.