The main purpose of data centers is to provide the resources required to run applications and securely store data. As enterprises of every size move to digitize their businesses and adapt to new cloud-native workloads while preserving support for well-established applications, they need to rely on a storage network with no compromises. Most enterprise applications count on relational databases and block storage to host their data. In this context, Fibre Channel networking devices are the preferred choice for connecting computational resources to data repositories in the form of disk arrays and tape libraries. Even today, with a variety of file- and object-based storage solutions on the market and the block-based alternative offered by Small Computer System Interface over IP (iSCSI) technology, almost all financial institutions and most Fortune 500 companies rely on Fibre Channel, sometimes in combination with its derivative Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol, as their trusted storage networking infrastructure, capable of functioning with almost no downtime.
This chapter covers the following key topics:
Cisco MDS 9000 Series Hardware: This section discusses Cisco MDS 9000 Series hardware including Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors, 9300 Series Multilayer Fabric Switches, 9200 Series Multiservice Switches, and 9100 Series Multilayer Fabric Switches.
Fibre Channel Basics: This section discusses Fibre Channel topologies, port types, addressing, and switch fabric initialization. This section also discusses device registration, FLOGI, and FCNS databases.
CFS: This section discusses CFS features, CFS fabric lock, CFSoIP, and CFSoFC concepts, along with CFS Merge and CFS Regions concepts.
VSAN: This section discusses VSAN features, attributes, advantages, Dynamic Port VSAN Membership (DPVM), and VSAN Trunking concepts.
SAN Port Channels: This section discusses types of SAN port channels, port channel load balancing, and port channel modes.
Zoning: This section discusses zoning features, zone enforcement, full and active zone set, Autozone, zone merge, smart zoning, and enhanced zoning concepts.
Device Alias: This section discusses device alias features, modes, and distribution and compares zone aliases and device aliases.
NPIV and NPV: This section discusses the concepts of NPIV and NPV and includes a configuration example.
“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz
The “Do I Know This Already?” quiz enables you to assess whether you should read this entire chapter thoroughly or jump to the “Exam Preparation Tasks” section. If you are in doubt about your answers to these questions or your own assessment of your knowledge of the topics, read the entire chapter. Table 8-1 lists the major headings in this chapter and their corresponding “Do I Know This Already?” quiz questions. You can find the answers in Appendix A, “Answers to the ‘Do I Know This Already?’ Quizzes.”