Blog O’ Matty

Zoning Brocade switches: Creating configurations

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.