VSAN vs Zone | a clear understanding

[RUHUL AMIN]

Hi all,

I am new in data center technology, learning bit by bit. But drown in VSAN & zone :)....pwwn, nwwn, fcid, zoning, zone set, port type, LUN, floggi, ploggi, fcns, masking, mapping,..... fc, fcoe, fabricpath, vPC.... and so on and on. searched and read a lot about both, basic concept about both are (individually)  clear to me.

But can not combined them together. can someone answer following question in details please?

1. can I use VSAN and zone together in my environment? 

2. why I would be using both at the same time?

3. and why not?

these question might not smart enough and may sounds weird, but I will really appreciate if someone can clear this jam out of my head.

[santkumd528]

VSAN is a virtualization layer on top of a physical switch. You can use the switch as a single entity without virtual layer. But with VSAN you can make it looks like a group of switches each having their own VSAN membership or id. The default VSAN is one and you can make it looks like as many you want, like 2 ,3 to x

[RUHUL AMIN]

Hi santkumd528, thanks a lot for your reply.  Nice concept of vsan.

Can you use both zone and vsan together? Why would you ?

[Walter Dey]

You need VSAN's; every interface (physical or logical) is member of exactly one VSAN; VSAN 1 is embedded and cannot be deleted; all the interfaces are initially in VSAN 1.

However, best practise is not using VSAN 1, but e.g. create 2 different VSAN's for Fabric A resp B (on 2 physical MDS or Nexus 5k); eg. VSAN 10 on fabric A, MDS-A, VSAN 20 on fabric B MDS-B.

Then zoning is done per VSAN ! see eg.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/storage/san_switches/mds9000/sw/san-os/quick/guide/qcg_zones.html