UCS Direct attached storage and zonning

[frank yie]

Hello,

As soon as I create boot policies zoning is done ( verified with sh zone command, I can see many zones) yet all the Cisco validated designs and the Cisco example below show that initiator group is required (created during the Service Profile wizard ). Do I really need the initiator groups ? Can anyone explain the difference between the two?

Thanks much,

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/servers-unified-computing/ucs-infrastructure-ucs-manager-software/116082-config-ucs-das-00.html

[Manuel Velasco]

Hi frank,

Based on what you are discribing it looks like you created your service profiles for your blades to boot from SAN. If this is the case it is expected to see the zones already created as this is an expected behavior. You can test this by removing the boot policy or one of the targets in the policy. When you do this you will see that the zones will be remove as well.

 Note that the only time you want to create an initiator group is when you are trying to access an storage array where the blade is not already using the storage targets to access a boot lun. For example, If your blades were booting from local storage and you want the to access an storages array then you want to create an initiator group.  

Let me me know if this helps.

[frank yie]

Yes, I am booting from SAN...the thing is that all validated designs I read use boot from SAN and initiator groups. This to me looks like double zoning, unless I am missing something.

[Walter Dey]

Hi Frank

Don't worry ! it is a ugly thing, but cannot be changed. You need initator group, and the second zone gets created only for the case of san boot.

Walter.