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# About SAN managers

SAN Managers are a resource in HPE OneView that represent a connection to an external entity through which SANs are discovered and managed. The external entity can be vendor-specific management software or a physical switch.

SANs are created outside of HPE OneView in the SAN manager vendor’s management interface. Once created, SANs can be discovered and managed in HPE OneView using the SAN Manager resource.

When creating SAN managers, it is possible to have two SAN managers discovering the same SAN, causing it to show up twice in the SAN view. When associating an HPE OneView network to the SAN, the choice of which SAN to associate determines which SAN manager will be used to manage the SAN, and the other will be removed (hidden) as HPE OneView does not permit a SAN to be managed through more than one SAN manager.

HPE OneView supports SAN managers from different vendors. See the HPE OneView Support Matrix for a list of supported SAN managers.

## About zone sets

A zone set is a set of zones you can configure all zones on a SAN manager by activating a zone set from the SAN manager. HPE OneView modifies the active zone set when performing zoning or alias configuration. Zone sets are not exposed in HPE OneView.

Active zone set | The zone set currently enforced by the fabric.
Inactive zone set | The inactive zone sets for the SAN. Only one zone set can be activate at a time.

SAN manager | Term for Inactive zone set
--- | ---
HPE | Standby zone set
Cisco | Local zone set
Brocade (BNA) | Zone configurations

## Configuring SAN managers to be managed by HPE OneView

You must configure SAN managers using the management software provided by the SAN manager vendor to properly manage them in HPE OneView. After properly configuring the SAN manager, you can add it to HPE OneView.

| CAUTION: Performing zone operations from multiple switches without executing a full zone set distribution might result in the loss of zoning data.

| NOTE: Switch vendors support fabric world wide name (FWWN) or node port world wide name (PWWN) zone memberships. HPE OneView only uses PWWN for zone membership.

Best Practice: SAN managers

- Always use a single switch to perform all zoning operations, regardless of the management software you use to perform the zoning.

- Always use the full zone set distribution commands and settings when making zone changes. HPE OneView does this on the SAN manager and SAN through which it is managing by default.

Configuring HPE SAN managers

- You must have a valid SNMP v3 user with default `read` permissions. See The HPE OneView User Guide.

Configuring Cisco SAN manager

- You must have a valid SNMP v3 user with `write` permissions. See The HPE OneView User Guide.

Configuring Brocade Network Advisor SAN manager

- You must have a valid user account with SMIS running. See the documentation for your SAN manager for more information.

- To allow HPE OneView to see SAN fabric topology changes automatically, you must disable `Track Fabric Changes` on the BNA. Otherwise, you must perform an `Accept Changes` operation on the BNA whenever you make changes to the SAN fabric topology for HPE OneView to see them. See the BNA documentation for more information on disabling `Track Fabric Changes`.

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