HP StorageWorks 1606 Brocade Fabric OS Administrator's Guide v6.3.0 (53-100133 - Page 272

11 Broadcast zones The dotted box represents the consolidated broadcast zone, which contains all of the devices that can receive broadcast packets. The actual delivery of broadcast packets is also controlled by the Admin Domain and zone enforcement logic. The consolidated broadcast zone is not an actual zone, but is just an abstraction used for explaining the behavior. • The broadcast zone for AD1 includes member devices "1,1", "3,1" and "5,1"; however, "3,1" and "5,1" are not members of AD1. Consequently, from the AD1 broadcast zone, only "1,1" is added to the consolidated broadcast zone. • The broadcast zone for AD2 includes member devices "2,1", "3,1", and "4,1". Even though "2,1" is a member of AD1, it is not a member of AD2 and so is not added to the consolidated broadcast zone. • Device "3,1" is added to the consolidated broadcast zone because of its membership in the AD2 broadcast zone. When a switch receives a broadcast packet it forwards the packet only to those devices which are zoned with the sender and are also part of the consolidated broadcast zone. You can check whether a broadcast zone has any invalid members that cannot be enforced in the current AD context. Refer to "Validating a zone" on page 235 for complete instructions. Broadcast zones and FC-FC routing If you create broadcast zones in a metaSAN consisting of multiple fabrics connected through an FC router, the broadcast zone must include the IP device that exists in the edge or backbone fabric as well as the proxy device in the remote fabric. See Chapter 21, "Using the FC-FC Routing Service," for information about proxy devices and the FC router. High availability considerations with broadcast zones If a switch has broadcast zone-capable firmware on the active CP (Fabric OS v5.3.x or later) and broadcast zone-incapable firmware on the standby CP (Fabric OS version earlier than v5.3.0), then you cannot create a broadcast zone because the zoning behavior would not be the same across an HA failover. If the switch failed over, then the broadcast zone would lose its special significance and would be treated as a regular zone. Loop devices and broadcast zones Delivery of broadcast packets to individual devices in a loop is not controlled by the switch. Consequently, adding loop devices to a broadcast zone does not have any effect. If a loop device is part of a broadcast zone, then all devices in that loop receive broadcast packets. Best practice: All devices in a single loop should have uniform broadcast capability. If all the devices in the loop can handle broadcast frames, then add the FL_Port to the broadcast zone. Broadcast zones and default zoning The default zoning mode defines the device accessibility behavior if zoning is not implemented or if there is no effective zone configuration. The default zoning mode has two options: • All Access-All devices within the fabric can communicate with all other devices. • No Access-Devices in the fabric cannot access any other device in the fabric. 230 Fabric OS Administrator's Guide 53-1001336-01