In storage networking, Fibre Channel zoning is the partitioning of a Fibre Channel fabric into smaller subsets to restrict interference, add security, and to simplify management. Zoning a fibre channel network at the switch level provides a security boundary that ensures host devices do not see. “The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) is a mutual benefit, non-profit, international organization of manufacturers, system integrators, developers, vendors, and industry professionals, and end users. Zoning also enables you to set up access control between hosts and storage. Each time any device joins the fabric, it performs a process referred as a fabric login (FLOGI). This FLOGI assigns a 24 bit N-Port IDS to all the devices and specifies the class of service to be used. Systems are defined by supported configuration and zoning rules.
[PDF Version]