VMware Hosts and Zoning

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I currently have several VM Hosts zoned together and I am in the process of implementing two new redundant switches.  I did not originally zone these VM hosts together and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on best practices?  Is it better to put the hosts all in one zone or is it better to zone each port separately with the storage?

I have a new Cisco UCS implemented with 2 ports to each new switch and each port is zoned separately to the storage.  I was wondering if I should follow that same method with the 3 physical hosts as well.

Zoning for UCS is as follows:

Port 0 and 1 storage zoned with port 2 for UCS

Port 8 and 9 storage zoned with port 10 for UCS

I have the same exact config on the redundant switch.  What I was planning on doing is using ports 6, 7, and 8 for the physical hosts and zoning those to the storage on ports 0,1, 8, and 9.  The question is should I have 3 separate zones or do an vmzone and put them all together.

Thank you for all your help and feedback!

[Anonymous]

Hello,

best practice is to create a single zone for each server.

This means

Zone1: server1 <-->storagePort1

Zone2: server2 <-->storagePort1

Zone3: server3 <-->storagePort1

Zone4: server4 <-->storagePort2

....

You have to decide if you do a zoning on WWPN or port IDs.

both methodes had some operational advantages or disadvantages.

Most common is a zoning based on WWPN. In some blade center environments is a port based zoning better for more flexebility.

Create your own naming convention to understand what the zone contains.

Under documentation you can find a zoning document from Brocade with some guidelines.

I hope this helps,

Andreas