Vsan Trunking Mismatches - Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Configuration Manual

Configuring VSAN Trunking
Information About VSAN Trunking
Trunking E Ports
Trunking E ports enables interconnected ports to transmit and receive frames in more than one VSAN, over
the same physical link, using enhanced ISL (EISL) frame format.
Figure 5: Trunking E Ports
Trunking F Ports
Trunking F ports allows interconnected ports to transmit and receive tagged frames in more than one VSAN,
over the same physical link.

VSAN Trunking Mismatches

If you misconfigure VSAN configurations across E ports, issues can occur such as the merging of traffic in
two VSANs (causing both VSANs to mismatch). The VSAN trunking protocol validates the VSAN interfaces
at both ends of an ISL to avoid merging VSANs (see the following figure).
Figure 6: VSAN Mismatch
In this example, the trunking protocol detects potential VSAN merging and isolates the ports involved.
The trunking protocol cannot detect merging of VSANs when a third-party switch is placed in between two
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches (see the following figure).
Figure 7: Third-Party Switch VSAN Mismatch
VSAN 2 and VSAN 3 are effectively merged with overlapping entries in the name server and the zone
applications. The Cisco MDS 9000 Fabric Manager helps detect such topologies.
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series NX-OS SAN Switching Configuration Guide
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