Fibre Channel zoning

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In storage networking, Fibre Channel zoning is the partitioning of a Fibre Channel fabric into smaller subsets to restrict interference, add security, and to simplify management. While a SAN makes available several devices and/or ports to a single device, each system connected to the SAN should only be allowed access to a controlled subset of these devices/ports. Zoning applies only to the switched fabric topology (FC-SW), it does not exist in simpler Fibre Channel topologies.

Zoning is different from VSANs, in that each port can be a member of multiple zones, but only one VSAN. VSAN (similarly to VLAN) is in fact a separate network (separate sub-fabric), with its own fabric services^{[clarification needed]} (including its own separate zoning).