What are hard and soft zoning?
Hard zoning is zoning which is implemented in hardware. Soft zoning is zoning which is implemented in software.
Hard zoning physically blocks access to a zone from any device outside of the zone.
Soft zoning uses filtering implemented in fibre channel switches to prevent ports from being seen from outside of their assigned zones. The security vulnerability in soft zoning is that the ports are still accessible if the user in another zone correctly guesses the fibre channel address.
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Network System Architects, Inc.
