SAN fabric

The SAN fabric is an area of the network that contains routers and switches. A Storage Area Network (SAN) is configured into a number of zones. A device that uses the SAN can communicate only with devices that are included in the same zones that it is in. A system requires several distinct types of zones: a system zone, host zones, and disk zones. The intersystem zone is optional.

SAN fabric function is available only if a Fibre Channel option is installed. Otherwise, this information does not apply.

In the host zone, the host systems can identify and address the nodes. You can have more than one host zone and more than one disk zone. Unless you are using a dual fabric design, the system zone contains all ports from all nodes in the system. Create one zone for each host Fibre Channel port. In a disk zone, the nodes identify the storage systems. Generally, create one zone for each external storage system. If you are using the Metro Mirror and Global Mirror feature, create a zone with at least one port from each node in each system; up to four systems are supported.

Note: Some operating systems cannot tolerate other operating systems in the same host zone, although you might have more than one host type in the SAN fabric. For example, you can have a SAN that contains one host that runs on an AIX operating system and another host that runs on a MicrosoftWindows operating system.

All communication between the nodes is performed through the enclosure midplane for nodes in the same control enclosure. All of the system configuration and service commands are sent to the system through an Ethernet network.