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Configuring and Managing VSANs
This chapter describes how to configure and manage VSANs.
This chapter includes the following sections:
•
Configuring and Managing VSANs
You can achieve higher security and greater stability in Fibre Channel fabrics by using virtual SANs (VSANs).
VSANs provide isolation among devices that are physically connected to the same fabric. With VSANs you
can create multiple logical SANs over a common physical infrastructure. Each VSAN can contain up to 239
switches and has an independent address space that allows identical Fibre Channel IDs (FC IDs) to be used
simultaneously in different VSANs.
Information About VSANs
A VSAN is a virtual storage area network (SAN). A SAN is a dedicated network that interconnects hosts and
storage devices primarily to exchange SCSI traffic. In SANs you use the physical links to make these
interconnections. A set of protocols run over the SAN to handle routing, naming, and zoning. You can design
multiple SANs with different topologies.
You can achieve higher security and greater stability in Fibre Channel fabrics by using virtual SANs (VSANs).
VSANs provide isolation among devices that are physically connected to the same fabric. With VSANs you
can create multiple logical SANs over a common physical infrastructure. Each VSAN can contain up to 239
switches and has an independent address space that allows identical Fibre Channel IDs (FC IDs) to be used
simultaneously in different VSANs.
VSAN Topologies
A VSAN has the following additional features:
• Multiple VSANs can share the same physical topology.
• The same Fibre Channel IDs (FC IDs) can be assigned to a host in another VSAN, which increases
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Configuring and Managing VSANs, page 113
VSAN scalability.
Cisco Nexus 5500 Series NX-OS SAN Switching Configuration Guide, Release 7.x
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