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Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fabric Manager Configuration Guide
OL-6965-03, Cisco MDS SAN-OS Release 2.x
Chapter 22 FICON Configuration
About FICON
VSANs also help you to move unused ports nondisruptively and provide a common redundant physical
infrastructure (see Figure 22-2).
Figure 22-2 VSAN-Specific Fabric Optimization
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.
Note While you can configure up to 256 VSANs in any Cisco MDS switch, you can enable FICON in 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 9200 Series 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 Cisco
Separate physical fabrics Collapsed fabric with
VSANs
SAN island for
department no.1
SAN island for
department no. 2
SAN island for
department no. 3
Application
servers
Disk
arrays
Department no. 1
Department no. 2
VSAN
Department no.3
VSAN
Common
storage pool
found among
VSANs
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