Persistent Binding - LUN Masking

LUN Masking

from Fibre Channel zoning

Zoning is sometimes confused with LUN masking, because it serves the same goals. LUN masking, however, works on Fibre channel level 4 (i.e. on SCSI level), while zoning works on level 2. This allows zoning to be implemented on switches, whereas LUN masking is performed on endpoint devices - host adapters or disk array controllers.

Some fibre channel switches allow zoning at the LUN level, effectively implementing LUN masking at the switch.

Here, we are talking about level 4.

This form of zoning has to be augmented by another zoning : RAID ARRAY based or fabric-based(FC switch) to improve security and avoid any errors. Otherwise two hosts may access the same data(LUNS) at the same time and it will result in data corruption. Persistent binding is often used in a cluster environnement, to associate a LUN with a persistent SCSI id and device (example /dev/sda)

Read more about this topic:  Persistent Binding

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