About VLANs

VLANs provide logical segmentation of networks by creating separate broadcast domains, which can span multiple physical network segments. They can be grouped by departments, such as engineering and accounting, or by projects, such as release1 and release2. VLANs provide a number of advantages:

• Ease of administration — VLANs enable logical grouping of end-stations that are physically dispersed on a network. This aids in speed, efficiency, and accuracy of provisioning the right LUN to the right client.
• Access control — VLANs enforce security policies by separating different environments for security and compliance.
• Reduction of network traffic — By confining broadcast domains, VLANs reduce the need to have routers deployed on a network to contain broadcast traffic. In addition, end-stations on a VLAN are prevented from listening to or receiving broadcasts not intended for them. If a router is not connected between the VLANs, the end-stations of a VLAN cannot communicate with the end-stations of other VLANs.

VLANs have IDs from 1 to 4094. The array allows a single VLAN ID to be assigned to a single subnet. A subnet without a VLAN ID belongs to the default VLAN. In a group of arrays, certain restrictions apply:

• A subnet must be assigned to at least one interface on each array in the group.
• A group can have a maximum of 60 subnets, including the management subnet.
• Each array in a group can have a maximum of 120 subnet-to-NIC assignments.