Configuring And Managing Vsans; About Vsans; Vsans Topologies - Cisco AP775A - Nexus Converged Network Switch 5010 Configuration Manual

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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. This chapter includes the following
sections:
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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.
This section describes VSANs and includes the following topics:
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VSANs Topologies

With the introduction of VSANs, the network administrator can build a single topology containing
switches, links, and one or more VSANs. Each VSAN in this topology has the same behavior and
property of a SAN. A VSAN has the following additional features:
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OL-17256-03, Cisco MDS NX-OS Release 4.x
About VSANs, page 26-1
VSAN Configuration, page 26-5
Default Settings, page 26-12
VSANs Topologies, page 26-1
VSAN Advantages, page 26-3
VSANs Versus Zones, page 26-4
Multiple VSANs can share the same physical topology.
The same Fibre Channel IDs (FC IDs) can be assigned to a host in another VSAN, thus increasing
VSAN scalability.
Every instance of a VSAN runs all required protocols such as FSPF, domain manager, and zoning.
Fabric-related configurations in one VSAN do not affect the associated traffic in another VSAN.
C H A P T E R
Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fabric Manager Configuration Guide
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