Provisioning with zone control

When you provision storage, you can set a zoning policy to enable automatic zoning. When automatic zoning is enabled, IBM Spectrum® Control can create zones during storage provisioning to connect a server to a storage system.

Discontinued support: Provisioning is no longer supported in IBM Spectrum Control. While the feature might still work in this release, it's recommended that you use another tool for your provisioning needs, when possible. For a complete list of discontinued features, see Discontinued features in IBM Spectrum Control.

When IBM Spectrum Control creates a provisioning task, it identifies the best location for the new storage that satisfies the requirements of the service class. If automatic zoning is enabled, then, during provisioning, existing zones are used if the server already has connectivity to the storage system. Otherwise, one or more zones are created between a host initiator port and a controller, node, or module port.

IBM Spectrum Control provides the support for zone control and management of Brocade switches and fabrics that are managed by using Brocade Network Advisor, and Cisco switches and fabrics.

The Cisco support includes:
  • Standard Cisco zone control capabilities
  • Cisco Enhanced Zoning features.
To set or modify the zoning policy, complete the following steps:
  1. In the menu bar, go to Advanced Analytics > Provisioning, and click Set Zoning Policy.
  2. Enable or disable automatic zoning:
    • Enable automatic zoning to allow IBM Spectrum Control to create zones during storage provisioning. The naming convention for new zones is host_storage-system_suffix-number. When you enable automatic zoning, you can specify the following options:
      Zone name prefix
      If you specify a zone name prefix, all zones that are automatically created by IBM Spectrum Control are prefixed with a string you specify. This prefix can help you identify which zones were automatically created, and which were created manually.
      Make changes to the active zone set
      Specify whether changes are made to the active zone set or to a new inactive zone set. If this check box is selected, one or more new zones are added to the active zone set. If the check box is cleared, a new inactive zone set is created and the new zone or zones are added to this new inactive zone set. The new inactive zone set will contain only the new zones.
    • Disable automatic zoning if you want IBM Spectrum Control to use only existing zones. If you disable automatic zoning, no changes will be made to the zoning for the fabric.
  3. Click Save.