Cisco MDS Zoning Commands

The RoundTower Demonstration Lab uses re-purposed Cisco UCS, Cisco MDS, Dell-EMC VNX and XtremIO storage. The next-generation HCI infrastructure resides in the Sandbox portion of the lab for performance testing and customer POCs. I do not touch the MDS often and each time I have to perform administrator tasks, I search for the same commands, so here they are in one place.

I normally prepare the command set using a text editor and QA the configuration before I paste it into the terminal. I also make a copy of the configuration before I make any changes.

Step-1 – Define Device-Aliases

• SSH into the MDS A as “admin”
• Type “Configure Terminal”
• Type “device-alias database”
• Type “device-alias name <device name> pwwn <wwn>”
• Repeat for each new device you want to zone.
• Type “exit”
• Type “device-alias commit”
• Remember to do the same on MDS B.

Step-2 – Define Zone Names

• Type “zone name <HOSTNAME-HBA#_ARRAYNAME-SP#-PORT#> vsan <VSAN#>”
• Type “member device-alias <device name HOSTNAME-HBA#>”
• Type “member device-alias <device name ARRAYNAME-SP#-PORT#>”
• Repeat for each new Initiator and Target pair you want to zone.
• Remember to do the same on MDS B.

Step-3 – Add Zone Names to the Zone Set

• Type “zoneset name <FABRIC NAME> vsan <VSAN#>”
• Type “member <HOSTNAME-HBA#_ARRAYNAME-SP#-PORT#>”
• Repeat for each new zone defined in Step 2.
• Type “exit”
• Type “zoneset activate name <FABRIC NAME> vsan <VSAN#>”
• Type “Control-Z” to exit configuration mode.
• Type “copy running-config startup-config” to save the configuration.
• Remember to do the same on MDS B.
• Your initiators should now be able to discover your storage targets.