Changing MDS active zoneset disruptive?

[vestb]

First of all, I'll admit that I'm a novice when it comes to the MDS.  I've inherited a pair of 9148s at my new job and needed to make some zoning changes to present a new storage array to some of our VMWare hosts in preparation to move their datastores from the old array.  I did the following:

1. Created the new zones (one for each host containing the host WWN and the WWNs of the 4 array ports).

2. Created a new zoneset containing the existing zones in the active set as well as the new ones I just created.

3. Activated the new zoneset.

The reason I created a new zoneset instead of using the existing one is that it appears we have always done it that way here based on documentation left by the previous admin.  I believe it was basically a form of versioning for quick and easy rollback.

I was under the impression that this was a non-disruptive process, but within a few minutes we had 4 of the hosts crash with storage-related errors.  Now this was just a small subset of the hosts affected by the zoning change (13 total), and the rest displayed no issues, but I'm worried my zoneset change was the cause.  Has anyone ever had this happen before?  Would it have made any difference if I had simply modified and re-activated the exiting zoneset instead of a new one?

Thanks in advance,

Brian

[Vu Phan]

Hello Brian,

Update zones/zoneset is a non-disruptive process. But, if you use WWN it may disrupt. The requirement for zones/zoneset is to use WWPN. You can find WWPN from "show flogi database" command.

So Please use WWPNs instead.

1. Created the new zones (one for each host containing the host WWN and the WWNs of the 4 array ports).

>>>  You should use WWPN of the host and WWPNs of the 4 array ports instead of WWN

2. Created a new zoneset containing the existing zones in the active set as well as the new ones I just created.

>>>  This is fine

3. Activated the new zoneset.

>>> This is fine

This is Cisco document for your references.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/mds9000/sw/7_3/configuration/fabric/fabric/zone.html

[vestb]

Thanks for the reply Vu,

Sorry that was a typo, I meant the WWPN (at least if that's the same thing as the PWWN) - here's one of my zones:

zone name FS2_ESX09 vsan 100
  fcalias name FS2-N0S1P1 vsan 100
    pwwn 20:11:00:02:ac:00:63:b4

  fcalias name FS2-N1S1P1 vsan 100
    pwwn 21:11:00:02:ac:00:63:b4

  fcalias name FS2-N2S1P1 vsan 100
    pwwn 22:11:00:02:ac:00:63:b4

  fcalias name FS2-N3S1P1 vsan 100
    pwwn 23:11:00:02:ac:00:63:b4

  fcalias name WAYESX09 vsan 100
    pwwn 10:00:00:17:a4:77:18:55

Top 4 are the storage array, last one is the host HBA.  Does that look right?  Sorry, I'm fairly new to FC zoning.

Thanks again,

Brian

[Vu Phan]

Yes that looks correct

Your zone configuration will look like this

config t

zone name FS2_ESX09 vsan 100
  fcalias name FS2-N0S1P1
  fcalias name FS2-N1S1P1
  fcalias name FS2-N2S1P1
  fcalias name FS2-N3S1P1

  fcalias name WAYESX09

zoneset name <name of zoneset> vsan 100

 member FS2_ESX09

zoneset activate name <name of zoneset> vsan 100

show zoneset active vsan 100