Cisco Accelerates and Secures Trafic for Mainframe Storage and Open SANs

Cisco announced enhanced capabilities to its data center portfolio that will better protect information, enhance resiliency, and reduce cost and complexity for storage-area networks (SANs). The new capabilities enhance security and accelerate data traffic over greater distance for customers with IBM System z mainframe storage environments and for those with open systems SANs. By improving data security and accelerating data back up and disaster recovery, these new capabilities support Cisco’s Data Center 3.0 strategy to help IT organizations build next generation data centers that take advantage of technologies like data replication and virtualization and respond quickly to changing business needs.

   
MDS 9000 Family – 9506, 9513, 9509 Multilayer Directors
                     and 9216 Multilayer Fabric Switch

Technology Enhancements
for the Cisco MDS 9000 family of Multilayer Directors:

Faster Data Traffic Over Distance: Cisco XRC Acceleration
Jointly developed with IBM and designed for customers deploying IBM z/OS Global Mirror, this solution accelerates data traffic traveling very long distances over the wide-area network (WAN) reducing bandwidth consumption and shrinking update windows, while eliminating the need for costly, separate channel extension products.

Securing Data Traveling Outside the Data Center:
Cisco TrustSec Fibre Channel Link Encryption
Cisco TrustSec Fibre Channel Link Encryption, an industry first, addresses the need for data integrity and privacy. Cisco TrustSec FC Link Encryption is a hardware-based solution that can be enabled on a per-port basis without any performance degradation. This allows customers to encrypt data sent outside the trusted confines of their data center over metropolitan-area networks, such as data traveling between data centers.  Customers with especially demanding security requirements, such as defense or intelligence agencies, may also choose to deploy the technology within the data center so that all traffic between switches is encrypted. Both FICON (IBM Fibre Connectivity) and open systems data can be encrypted.

Speeding Data Backup and Disaster Recovery:
Cisco Input/Output (I/O) Accelerator
The Cisco MDS 9000 I/O Accelerator, an industry first, is a SAN-based intelligent fabric application that enables cost-effective data backup and disaster recovery solutions that are faster, more flexible, and deliver mission-critical availability. The IOA service can be extended to either disk or tape, over any transport protocol (FC or FCIP), regardless of the device location (directly attached, WAN, or MAN).

Managing Large Scale Storage-Area Networks:
Cisco SAN Fabric Manager
Enhancements to Cisco’s SAN Fabric Manager increase the number of devices that can be managed by Fabric Manager. Each Fabric Manager node now has a capacity of 15,000 devices, and up to 10 nodes can be federated together for reporting purposes, improving the manageability of large storage environments

"We’ve been using Cisco MDS 9500 directors for our IBM System z data center for more than three years," said Jon Jones, VP at Sallie Mae, the nation’s leading provider of student loans and administrator of college savings plans. "They’ve been rock solid for us, and they handle everything our z9s can throw at them. We’ve been using them for DASD and tape, and are looking forward to adding additional virtual tape in the near future. Cisco’s VSAN technology helps us maintain the isolation we need within our System z and open systems environments."

"The Cisco MDS family is a critical component in our data center portfolio, and we will continue to invest in improvements and new capabilities to better serve our customers, while protecting their existing technology infrastructure investments," said Rajiv Ramaswami, VP and general manager of the Data Center Switching Technology Group at Cisco. "In addition, Cisco and IBM share a common goal to provide the most secure and robust solutions for our customers. By deploying a Cisco MDS-based SAN with IBM System z, data center managers can implement highly secure and scalable disaster recovery strategies over any distance, and with the confidence that Cisco will continue to evolve new capabilities over time."