Can 6200 series Interconnects act as FC Fabrics?

[John Whites]

Greetings.

I know with UCS 2.1 you can plug the FC SAN directly into the fabric without the need for an upstream mds switch for zoning.

Can you plug the SAN directly into the interconnect as well as an external host (say some random rackmount server) and gain access to the luns on the SAN, or is there some magic with the interconnects where only the blades in the fabric can be zoned and see the storage?

[alhaider]

Samdeep,

UCS can be directly connected with the storage array, however any Non-UCS server will not be able to access the array via fabric Interconnect. With UCSM 2.1 default zoning has been disabled.  and each initiator has to be specifically mapped to the target for zoning to work. Since UCSM only recognizes UCS blade and rackmount servers, only these type of servers can be zoned via UCSM to access the FC storage.

Ali

[John Whites]

Thank you.  I figured this would be the case.  I assume it's intention to not be able to zone other devices so that you are required to buy and MDS or 5K to use different hardware.