Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Fabric Manager Software Configuration Guide, NX-OS 4.0 (OL-16598-01, June 2008)

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Nexus 5000 Series Switch Fabric Manager Software Configuration Guide
OL-16598-01
Chapter 15 Configuring and Managing VSANs
Information About VSANs
Fabric-related configurations in one VSAN do not affect the associated traffic in another VSAN.
Events causing traffic disruptions in one VSAN are contained within that VSAN and are not
propagated to other VSANs.
Figure 15-1 shows a fabric with three switches, one on each floor. The geographic location of the
switches and the attached devices is independent of their segmentation into logical VSANs. No
communication between VSANs is possible. Within each VSAN, all members can talk to one another.
Figure 15-1 Logical VSAN Segmentation
Figure 15-2 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.
The application servers or storage arrays can be connected to the switch using Fibre Channel or virtual
Fibre Channel interfaces. A VSAN can include a mixture of Fibre Channel and virtual Fibre Channel
interfaces.
Switch 1
Switch 2
Switch 3
Engineering
VSAN
Marketing
VSAN
Accounting
VSAN
Floor 3
Floor 2
Floor 1
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