Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) are the standard mechanism used in FlexPod designs to logically segment a single physical network into multiple, isolated broadcast domains. This is essential for separating different types of traffic to enhance security and manage performance. In this scenario, dedicated VLANs would be created for NFS datastore traffic, SMB file services traffic, and NFS home directory traffic. Each VLAN ensures that traffic from one use case does not interfere with the others, providing end-to-end isolation from the virtual machine to the storage controller across the network fabric.

A. VSAN: Virtual Storage Area Network (VSAN) is a technology used to create isolated logical fabrics within a physical Fibre Channel (FC) network, not for IP-based traffic like NFS and SMB.

B. VXLAN: Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) is a network virtualization technology that creates an overlay network. While it provides isolation, VLANs are the more fundamental and standard underlay topology for this requirement in FlexPod.

D. vPC: A virtual PortChannel (vPC) is a Cisco Nexus feature that provides link aggregation and redundancy by allowing a device to connect to two separate switches. It does not provide traffic isolation.

1. NetApp Technical Report TR-4890: VMware vSphere on FlexPod Design Guide. Page 11, Section "Network design considerations," states, "The network design for a FlexPod solution is based on a few key principles... Traffic separation. Different traffic types are separated into their own VLANs and subnets."

2. NetApp Verified Architecture NVA-1148-DESIGN: FlexPod Datacenter with VMware vSphere 7.0, Cisco UCS 4th Generation, and NetApp ONTAP 9.8 Design Guide. Page 32, Section "Network Design," explicitly states, "VLANs are used to segment the traffic into logical networks. At a minimum, the following VLANs are required..." It then lists separate VLANs for management, vMotion, and NFS traffic. Figure 10 on page 33 visually depicts this VLAN layout.

3. Cisco Validated Design (CVD): FlexPod Datacenter with VMware vSphere 7.0U1, Cisco UCS M5, and NetApp AFF A-Series with NetApp ONTAP 9.8 Design Guide. Chapter 3, "Solution Design," in the "Network Design" section, details the creation of specific VLANs for different traffic types, including NFS, iSCSI, and VM data, as a core design principle.