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Chapter 11
Configuring and Managing VSANs
The switch icons shown in both figures indicate that these features apply to any switch in the Cisco MDS
9000 family.
Figure 11-2
H2
H1
The four switches in this network are interconnected by trunk links that carry both VSAN 2 and VSAN
7 traffic. Thus the inter-switch topology of both VSAN 2 and VSAN 7 are identical. This is not a
requirement and a network administrator can enable certain VSANs on certain links to create different
VSAN topologies.
Without VSANs, a network administrator would need separate switches and links for separate SANs. By
enabling VSANs, the same switches and links may be shared by multiple VSANs. VSANs allow SANs
to be built on port granularity instead of switch granularity. 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:
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VSANs can meet the needs of a particular department or application.
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OL-7753-01
Example of Two VSANs
AS1
H3
FC
FC
SA1
SA2
SA3
Link in VSAN 2
Link in VSAN 7
Trunk link
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
AS2
AS3
FC
FC
SA4
Cisco MDS 9000 Fabric Manager Switch Configuration Guide
How VSANs Work
11-3
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