Although not a requirement, it is beneficial to implement some naming hierarchy when creating MAC, WWNN, and WWPN identity pool addresses. This naming hierarchy could be very helpful in troubleshooting scenarios such as network traces and SAN zoning. We will use an example of a MAC pool to implement a simple naming hierarchy. Using these guidelines, you can create the naming hierarchy for any pool.

Cisco MAC pools have the 00:25:B5:XX:XX:XX format, where 00:25:B5 is the Cisco organizational identifier. Now, we have the other six hexadecimal numbers to implement the naming convention with.

In our example, we will use the following convention. You can always come up with other suitable guidelines according to your environment:

• Use one hexadecimal number to represent your site or location
• Use one hexadecimal number to represent the cabinet where the chassis is located
• Use one hexadecimal number to represent the primary FI
• Use one hexadecimal number to represent the server operating system

In the following example, we can easily identify the server, which is located at the primary site in cabinet 1, the chassis number (Ch) as 3, and the operating system running on the server as Windows: