Smart Zoning and ISL

[Jeremy Waldrop]

Was reading about the Smart Zoning feature that is part of NX-OS 5.2(6) and up and had a question about ISL to other switches. Lets say you enable Smart Zoning but one of the FC switches in the fabric hasn't been upgraded to NX-OS 5.2(6), what happens on that switch when Smart Zoning is enabled?

Another question is if you have a Nexus 5500 switch in your fabric what happens there? Anyone know why Nexus 5500 doesn't support Smart Zoning but Nexus 7000 does?

thanks

[dynamoxxx · Accepted solution]

one little bit of info i got from Cisco a while back. I have recently migrated to brand new 9509 and started using SZ, it works great, helped with my zone "sprawl". Next for me is to enable SZ on an existing VSAN without bringing anything down, will be testing that in the lab soon.

@dynamoxxx

[Jeremy Waldrop]

Thanks, that is a big help. This rules out using SZ if you have Nexus 5500s in your fabric that aren't in NPV mode. Wonder why SZ is not available on the Nexus 5500s?

[dynamoxxx]

not even in nx-os 6.0(2) ?

@dynamoxxx

[Jeremy Waldrop]

Nope, commands not there on Nexus 5500s. Also take a look at this, at the bottom it doesn't mention Nexus 5500 only Nexus 7ks.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/ps4159/ps6409/ps5987/at_a_glance_c45-708533.pdf

[dynamoxxx]

darn, hopefully it will make it into 5ks as well. Time to ping your Cisco sales guy for road-map

@dynamoxxx

[Jeremy Waldrop]

yeah, really frustrating when Cisco does things like this. Come across a new feature that would really help our customers and save them time but then not include it in 5500s. A lot of our customers can still take advantage of it as they don't have 5ks in their SAN fabric or the ones they have are in NPV mode.