Hard vs Soft zoning.

interesting ..never thought about this one ..but how does physical zone segregation work ?

AFAIK basically Cisco keeps separate name servers for different vsans. This means that when your HBA logs on the fabric, it will see only other WWN that belong to the same vsan (and so share the same name server). The NS is responsible for mapping WWNs to FCIDs.

This actually creates isolated fabrics even if sharing the same common hardware since every "fabric" have its own name server. Having multiple NS means that you have different isolated "fabrics"

Now you have different fabrics.. Have fun

sure ..let's start with Cisco ..maybe later we can talk about Brocade ..i believe the new ones offer VSAN type of functionality.

Are you talking about Cisco VSANs ??

Italy: douze points !

You are correct: a VSAN is comparable to a physical fabric, so each VSAN is a fabric and therefore has it's own name server.

I learned vsans from you .. thx Rob

Really ? I did ? Waaw, I must be good at something then