Cisco Systems manual Cisco MDS 9000 Family, Collapsed Fabric with VSANs, Multiprotocol Support

VSANs apply proven technologies in Ethernet networking to the performance and isolation requirements of Fibre Channel storage networks to deliver best-in-class solutions. Zoning is very useful in restricting the access and traffic flow between devices within the fabric by securing access at the edge. VSANs offer a complimentary capability of isolating all services provided a fabric and “encapsulate” them within a VSAN therefore enabling a logically independent fabric.

Figure 5

Cisco MDS 9000 Family

VSAN2

VSAN1	EISL
	Trunks
Fiber Channel
Services for Fabric #1
Fiber Channel	Two DWDM
Services for Fabric #2
	Transponders
	DWDM

Collapsed Fabric with VSANs

The storage network domains created by VSANs not only leap frog the existing security mechanisms but also deliver the ability to segregate even a single switch into multiple virtual environments. They provide complete separation among different VSANs and guarantee that a device outage or fabric instability is segregated to a single VSAN and doesn’t cause a fabric-wide interruption. All of this is available without the need to implement expensive solutions requiring multiple physically-isolated fabric switches. VSANs also lower the storage network TCO by maximizing port utilization and thereby lowering the effective per-port cost. This type of implementation is quite efficient as multiple user communities can be grouped together thereby allowing a single fabric switch to service them using fewer overall devices. Cisco MDS 9000 Family delivers leading edge security and services while lowering capital and operational expenditures.

This architecture reduces the total number of SANs or fabrics deployed in the data center while maintaining status quo in terms of separating backup/recovery and remote data mirroring domains from the application SAN. Considering the data center real estate and storage consolidation model customers are adopting, VSANs enable a lower TCO solution for the enterprise.

Multiprotocol Support

The MDS 9000 Family of Multilayer Directors and Fabric Switches integrate FCIP and iSCSI onto a single switching module for integrated Multiprotocol capability. The multiprotocol solution provides connectivity options over IP for applications such as disaster recovery. The integration of multiprotocol services along with high speed, high capacity Fibre Channel switching into a single platform allows customers to address their corporate-wide and departmental application requirements independently of each other however leveraging the same platforms. The integrated FCIP capability provides access to a remote data center over TCP/IP for seamless transition in case of a major failure. While

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