Peer zoning using aliases?

[bphammon]

I have two physical fabrics, each one composed of a 6520, and several 5300 switches.  Each zoneset is ~1600 zones with ~40 storage arrays and ~70 (ESX clustered...) hosts.

I just upgraded one fabric from 7.2.1c1 to 7.4.0.a and I was excited to try out peer zoning to cut down on the compexity of the zoneset.

I was horrified to see that, when constructing a peer zone, I am forced to use WWNs and not alias entries.  

I have to hope that I am doing something terribly wrong; otherwise I'm not sure that I am going to net any significant benefit out of going from a whole lot of zones that are very easy to read, to a much smaller number that will require significantly more careful handling.  Alias entries make my life worth living by clearly identifying objects in very human-understandable terms; a peer zone without them is just a bunch of WWNs...

Can someone please tell me what I have missed.

Thank you very much for your time and assistance.

[alexey.stepanov]

that's interesting. just had a look into the administrators and command reference guides and it really looks like only wwn and "domain,index" operands are allowed. technically speaking, i don't see any reason why aliases should not be supported. we all know that in the legacy zoning, defined config can contain aliases, but the effective config will always be translated to wwns and/or "d,i" pairs. i'm not sure why the same wouldn't be possible with peer zoning...

[bphammon]

I have come to the conclusion that aliases are simply not supported for peer zones.

That leaves me a bit dumbfounded:  It makes it a feature that is both a practical necessity for a large environment, and at the same time a huge step backwards for that same community.

 .......

Is there a chance that I can get a technical reply from a Brocade source on this?  

Is this a feature that is under development, and will be addressed in a near future revision, or is there an explicit technical reason that the two (aliases and peer zones) don't mix?

[ralf.schlosser]

Are you using BNA or CLI?

[alexey.stepanov]

So I heard that peer zones with aliases will be supported in about a year from now...

[bphammon]

I use BNA whenever possible, and CLI only when BNA won't do what I need.

In this case though, neither BNA or CLI appear to support use of alias in a peer zone.

Per the post below yours, it seems that the feature enhancement may be in the works for a future FOS update/release.

[avi_langberg]

Any idea of target day for Aliases with  Peer  zoning?

[Antonio Bongiorno T…]

@avi_langberg

see in FOS Admin Guide

http://www.brocade.com/content/html/en/administration-guide/fos-740-admin/GUID-179B37D8-BA09-488E-BCC7-E8550D053388.html

[Langberga]

Hi Antonio,

Maybe I did not explain myself well,

I agree that peer zoning will be the preferred way to go, and was new with the 7.4 code,  peerzones in 7.4 FOS can be implemented using WWPN not aliases,

From reading up it's seem that a future FOS will support Aliases with Peer zoning as an option to WWPN.

Is it correcte? if yes,  when?

Regards

[Langberga]

Version 8.1 allows to use a Aliases as a members to Peer Zone.

"Specify a member or list of members to be included in the Peer Zone. You can specify a
WWN, D, I, or zone alias"