Which storage protocol allows administrators to reduce the total number of network ports used in the network environment?

Fibre Channel over Ethernet converges FC and Ethernet traffic but still requires Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) and FCoE-capable switches, which adds rather than eliminates specialized port requirements.

vSAN uses the VMkernel network already present on ESXi hosts for storage traffic, removing the requirement for separate storage networking hardware such as FC HBAs or iSCSI NICs. Because storage runs over the existing Ethernet infrastructure, administrators do not need to add dedicated storage ports to each host or deploy separate storage network switches, directly reducing the total port count in the environment.

Fibre Channel requires dedicated FC HBAs on each host and separate FC fabric switches, increasing the total number of network ports in the environment.

Network File System uses standard IP networking for storage access but does not reduce port counts - it requires dedicated NFS VMkernel ports and does not consolidate storage traffic onto pre-existing adapters.