I’ve previously talked about creating Brocade aliases and zones, and wanted to discuss zone configurations in this post. Brocade zone configurations allow you to group one or more zones into an administrative unit, which you can then apply to a switch. Brocade has a number of commands that can be used to manage configurations, and they start with the string “cfg”:
cfgadd - Add a member to the configuration
cfgcopy - Copy a zone configuration
cfgcreate - Create a zone configuration
cfgdelete - Delete a zone configuration
cfgremove - Remove a member from a zone configuration
cfgrename - Rename a zone configuration
cfgshow - Print zone configuration
To create a new configuration, you can run the cfgcreate command with the name of the configuration to create, and an initial zone to place in the configuration:
Fabric1Switch1:admin>**cfgcreate "SANFabricOne", "CentOSNode1Zone1"**
Once the configuration is created, you can add additional zones using the cfgadd command:
Fabric1Switch1:admin> **cfgadd "SANFabricOne", "CentOSNode1Zone2"**
To ensure that your changes persistent through switch reboots, you can run cfgsave to write the configuration to flash memory:
Fabric1Switch1:admin> **cfgsave**
Starting the Commit operation...
0x102572c0 (tRcs): May 8 08:51:37
INFO ZONE-MSGSAVE, 4, cfgSave completes successfully.
cfgSave successfully completed
To view a configuration, you can run the cfgshow command:
Fabric1Switch1:admin> **cfgshow**
Defined configuration:
cfg: SANFabricOne
CentOSNode1Zone1; CentOSNode1Zone2; CentOSNode2Zone1;
CentOSNode2Zone2
zone: CentOSNode1Zone1
CentOSNode1Port1; NevadaPort1
zone: CentOSNode1Zone2
CentOSNode1Port2; NevadaPort2
zone: CentOSNode2Zone1
NevadaPort1; CentosNode2Port1
zone: CentOSNode2Zone2
NevadaPort2; CentosNode2Port2
alias: CentOSNode1Port1
21:00:00:1b:32:04:86:c3
alias: CentOSNode1Port2
21:01:00:1b:32:24:86:c3
alias: CentosNode2Port1
21:00:00:e0:8b:1d:f9:03
alias: CentosNode2Port2
21:01:00:e0:8b:3d:f9:03
alias: NevadaPort1
10:00:00:00:c9:3e:4c:eb
alias: NevadaPort2
10:00:00:00:c9:3e:4c:ea
Effective configuration:
cfg: SANFabricOne
zone: CentOSNode1Zone1
21:00:00:1b:32:04:86:c3
10:00:00:00:c9:3e:4c:eb
zone: CentOSNode1Zone2
21:01:00:1b:32:24:86:c3
10:00:00:00:c9:3e:4c:ea
zone: CentOSNode2Zone1
10:00:00:00:c9:3e:4c:eb
21:00:00:e0:8b:1d:f9:03
zone: CentOSNode2Zone2
10:00:00:00:c9:3e:4c:ea
21:01:00:e0:8b:3d:f9:03
Now you may notice in the output that there is a defined and effective configuration. The effective configuration contains the configuration that is currently running on the switch, and the defined configuration contains the configuration that is saved in flash. To make the configuration in flash effective, the cfgenable command needs to be run (this should be run after you make alias/switch/configuration changes and issue a cfgsave):
Fabric1Switch1:admin> **cfgenable "SANFabricOne"**
Starting the Commit operation...
0x1024f980 (tRcs): Apr 29 20:44:39
INFO ZONE-MSGSAVE, 4, cfgSave completes successfully.
cfgEnable successfully completed
Once the cfgenable runs, the effective configuration will be updated to match the configuration you have defined and saved. This completes this part of the Brocade series, and the final installation will cover switch backups and putting all the pieces together.