VSAN
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A VSAN (Virtual Storage Area Network) mainly allocates ports across different physical fabrics to create a virtual fabric. It acts as a self-contained fabric despite sharing hardware resources on switch(es). Ports within a switch can be partitioned into multiple VSANs. Vice versa, multiple switches can join available ports to form a single VSAN.
- Unlike a typical fabric bound by its port limitation, a VSAN can be dynamically expanded or reconfigured to incorporate more or less ports.
- A VSAN resembles VLAN (Virtual LAN) in Ethernet terminology. The design was modeled after VLAN.
- A VSAN can offer different protocols such as FC, FCIP, FICON, iSCSI. Each VSAN is a separate entity using distinctive security policies, zones, events, memberships, and name services. Traffic is also separate.
- In October 2004, the T11 Technical Committee approved Cisco Virtual SAN technology into the American National Standard Institute (ANSI) as the standard.
