Zoning Brocade switches: Creating configurations

Ive previously talked about creating Brocade aliases and zones, and wanted to discuss zone configurations in this post. Brocade zone configurations allow you to group one or more zones into an administrative unit, which you can then apply to a switch. Brocade has a number of commands that can be used to manage configurations, and they start with the string cfg: cfgadd Add a member to the configuration cfgcopy Copy a zone configuration cfgcreate Create a zone configuration cfgdelete Delete a zone configuration cfgremove Remove a member from a zone configuration cfgrename Rename a zone configuration cfgshow Print zone configuration To create a new configuration, you can run the cfgcreate command with the name of the configuration to create, and an initial zone to place in the configuration: Fabric1Switch1:admin>cfgcreate SANFabricOne, CentOSNode1Zone1 Once the configuration is created, you can add additional zones using the cfgadd command: Fabric1Switch1:admin> cfgadd SANFabricOne, CentOSNode1Zone2 To ensure that your changes persistent through switch reboots, you can run cfgsave to write the configuration to flash memory: Fabric1Switch1:admin> cfgsave Starting the Commit operation... 0x102572c0 (tRcs): May 8 08:51:37 INFO ZONE-MSGSAVE, 4, cfgSave completes successfully. cfgSave successfully completed

To view a configuration, you can run the cfgshow command: Fabric1Switch1:admin> cfgshow Defined configuration: cfg: SANFabricOne CentOSNode1Zone1; CentOSNode1Zone2; CentOSNode2Zone1; CentOSNode2Zone2 zone: CentOSNode1Zone1 CentOSNode1Port1; NevadaPort1 zone: CentOSNode1Zone2 CentOSNode1Port2; NevadaPort2 zone: CentOSNode2Zone1 NevadaPort1; CentosNode2Port1 zone: CentOSNode2Zone2 NevadaPort2; CentosNode2Port2 alias: CentOSNode1Port1 21:00:00:1b:32:04:86:c3 alias: CentOSNode1Port2 21:01:00:1b:32:24:86:c3 alias: CentosNode2Port1 21:00:00:e0:8b:1d:f9:03 alias: CentosNode2Port2 21:01:00:e0:8b:3d:f9:03 alias: NevadaPort1

10:00:00:00:c9:3e:4c:eb alias: NevadaPort2 10:00:00:00:c9:3e:4c:ea Effective configuration: cfg: SANFabricOne zone: CentOSNode1Zone1 21:00:00:1b:32:04:86:c3 10:00:00:00:c9:3e:4c:eb zone: CentOSNode1Zone2 21:01:00:1b:32:24:86:c3 10:00:00:00:c9:3e:4c:ea zone: CentOSNode2Zone1 10:00:00:00:c9:3e:4c:eb 21:00:00:e0:8b:1d:f9:03 zone: CentOSNode2Zone2 10:00:00:00:c9:3e:4c:ea 21:01:00:e0:8b:3d:f9:03

Now you may notice in the output that there is a defined and effective configuration. The effective configuration contains the configuration that is currently running on the switch, and the defined configuration contains the configuration that is saved in flash. To make the configuration in flash effective, the cfgenable command needs to be run (this should be run after you make alias/switch/configuration changes and issue a cfgsave): Fabric1Switch1:admin> cfgenable SANFabricOne Starting the Commit operation 0x1024f980 (tRcs): Apr 29 20:44:39 INFO ZONE-MSGSAVE, 4, cfgSave completes successfully. cfgEnable successfully completed

Once the cfgenable runs, the effective configuration will be updated to match the configuration you have defined and saved. This completes this part of the Brocade series, and the final installation will cover switch backups and putting all the pieces together.