VSANs Integrated SAN routing Advanced traffic management Advanced diagnostics and troubleshooting tools Well suited for efficient, secure SAN consolidation, ANSI T11-standard VSANs enable more efficient  storage network utilization by creating hardware-based isolated environments with a single physical SAN  fabric or switch. Each VSAN can be zoned as a typical SAN and maintained with its own fabric services  for greater scalability and resilience. VSANs allow the cost of SAN infrastructure to be shared among  more users, while helping ensure segregation of traffic and retaining independent control of configuration  on a VSAN-by-VSAN basis. In another step toward deployment of efficient, cost-effective, consolidated storage networks, the  24/10-Port SAN Extension Module supports IVR, the industry’s first and most efficient routing function for  Fibre Channel. IVR allows selective transfer of data between specific initiators and targets on different  VSANs while maintaining isolation of control traffic within each VSAN. With IVR, data can transit VSAN  boundaries while maintaining control-plane isolation, thereby maintaining fabric stability and availability.  IVR eliminates the need for external routing appliances, greatly increasing routing scalability while  delivering line-rate routing performance, simplifying management, and eliminating the challenges  associated with maintaining separate systems. IVR reduces the total cost of SAN ownership. The advanced traffic management capabilities integrated into the 24/10-Port SAN Extension Module  simplify deployment and optimization of large-scale fabrics: Management of large-scale storage networks requires proactive diagnostics, tools to verify connectivity  and route latency, and mechanisms for capturing and analyzing traffic. The IBM Storage Networking  c-type family integrates the industry’s most advanced analysis and diagnostic tools. Power-on self-test  (POST) and online diagnostics provide proactive health monitoring. The 24/10-Port SAN Extension  Module implements diagnostic capabilities, such as Fibre Channel Tracerout, to detail the exact path and  timing of flows, and Switch Port Analyzer (SPAN) to intelligently capture network traffic.  The module also supports the SAN Extension Tuner (SET) tool, which helps you optimize FCIP  performance by generating either direct-access (for magnetic disks) or sequential-access (for magnetic  tape) Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) I/O commands, and directing this traffic to a specific  virtual target. You can specify the size of the test I/O transfers and the number of concurrent or serial I/O  operations to generate while testing. The SET tool reports the resulting I/O operations per second (IOPS)  and I/O latency, which helps you determine the number of concurrent I/O operations needed to get the  best FCIP throughput. After traffic has been captured, it can be analyzed with the Fabric Analyzer, an embedded Fibre Channel  analyzer. Comprehensive port-based and flow-based statistics facilitate sophisticated performance  analysis and SLA accounting. With the IBM Storage Networking c-type family, IBM delivers a  comprehensive tool set for troubleshooting and analyzing storage networks. Virtual output queuing: Helps ensure line-rate performance on each port, independent of traffic   pattern, by eliminating head-of-line blocking. Port channels: Allow users to aggregate up to 16 FCIP ISLs into a single logical bundle, providing   optimized bandwidth utilization across all links. The bundle can consist of any speed-matched ports  from any module in the chassis, helping ensure that the bundle can remain active even in the event of  a module failure. Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF)–based multipathing: Provides the intelligence to load-balance   traffic across up to 16 equal-cost paths and, in the event of a switch failure, dynamically reroute traffic. QoS: Can be used to manage bandwidth and control latency, to prioritize critical traffic.  Shaper: Rate limits the WAN bandwidth according to the maximum bandwidth configured for the FCIP   tunnel. 6 IBM Storage Networking SAN192C-6 Product Guide