VLANs on a span port

Question

I'm currently creating a tool that will allow users to configure SPAN ports on a Cisco switch, and I was going to implement a feature that would allow a user to create a VLAN and add ports to it so it can be set as a source for the SPAN port without having to configure it on command line. But I can't see a reason why a user would set up a VLAN on a local session, it would make more sense to me if they simply just assigned the ports they want to monitor instead of assigning them to a VLAN and then assigning the VLAN as the source.

Can someone explain to me why I would use a VLAN, or is my statement above correct, and there is no need to set up a VLAN?

Answer 1

There are different types of span. You can either use local span if you're all computers are on the same switch or you can use remote span but most of the switches does not support a remote span.

The reason behind using VLAN is, you can monitor all ports that belongs to a particular VLAN in a single command.