Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Nx-Os San Switching Configuration Guide, Release 5.2(1)N1(1 - Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Configuration Manual

Configuring and Managing VSANs
The following figure shows a physical Fibre Channel switching infrastructure with two defined VSANs:
VSAN 2 (dashed) and VSAN 7 (solid). VSAN 2 includes hosts H1 and H2, application servers AS2 and AS3,
and storage arrays SA1 and SA4. VSAN 7 connects H3, AS1, SA2, and SA3.
Figure 28: Example of Two VSANs
The four switches in this network are interconnected by VSAN trunk links that carry both VSAN 2 and VSAN
7 traffic. You can configure a different inter-switch topology for each VSAN. In the preceding figure, the
inter-switch topology is identical for VSAN 2 and VSAN 7.
Without VSANs, a network administrator would need separate switches and links for separate SANs. By
enabling VSANs, the same switches and links might be shared by multiple VSANs. VSANs allow SANs to
be built on port granularity instead of switch granularity. The preceding figure illustrates that a VSAN is a
group of hosts or storage devices that communicate with each other using a virtual topology defined on the
physical SAN.
The criteria for creating such groups differ based on the VSAN topology:
• VSANs can separate traffic based on the following requirements:
OL-27583-01
◦ Different customers in storage provider data centers
◦ Production or test in an enterprise network
◦ Low and high security requirements
◦ Backup traffic on separate VSANs
◦ Replicating data from user traffic

Cisco Nexus 5000 Series NX-OS SAN Switching Configuration Guide, Release 5.2(1)N1(1)

Information About VSANs
117