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Chapter 23
Configuring FICON
Figure 23-2
SAN island for
department no.1
SAN island for
department no. 2
SAN island for
department no. 3
VSANs enable global SAN consolidation by allowing you to convert existing SAN islands into virtual
SAN islands on a single physical network. It provides hardware-enforced security and separation
between applications or departments to allow coexistence on a single network. It also allows virtual
rewiring to consolidate your storage infrastructure. You can move assets between departments or
applications without the expense and disruption of physical relocation of equipment.
While you can configure up to 256 VSANs in any Cisco MDS switch, you can enable FICON in only
eight of these VSANs.
FCIP Support
The multilayer architecture of the Cisco MDS 9000 Family enables a consistent feature set over a
protocol-agnostic switch fabric. Cisco MDS 9500 Series and MDS 9216 switches transparently integrate
Fibre Channel, FICON and Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) in one system. The FICON over FCIP feature
enables cost-effective access to remotely located mainframe resources. With the MDS 9000 platform,
storage replication services such as IBM PPRC and XRC can be extended over metro to global distances
using ubiquitous IP infrastructure and simplifying business continuance strategies.
The Cisco MDS implementation of FICON provides support for IP tunneling to efficiently consolidate
SANs over WAN distances. IP tunnels enable a globally accessible storage infrastructure. Refer to the
for further information on FCIP.
OL-7753-01
VSAN-specific Fabric Optimization
Separate physical fabrics
Application
servers
Disk
arrays
Department no. 1
Department no. 2
VSAN
Cisco MDS 9000 Fabric Manager Switch Configuration Guide
MDS-Specific FICON Advantages
Collapsed fabric with
VSANs
Common
storage pool
found among
VSANs
Department no.3
VSAN
23-4
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