From Cisco, High Density Fabric Switch

On a Cisco Systems, Inc.‘s blog, Tony Antony, senior marketing manager wrote:

Data is not just multiplying at an astounding rate. It is also changing dramatically in nature. Trends like the IoT, mobility, cloud, and big data analytics are driving the adoption of different types of storage protocols and architectural requirements as well as increased application workloads in the IT environments.

To help customers design efficient IT operations that can adapt over time to changing business needs, Cisco is announcing new additions and innovations to its MDS and Nexus Multi-Protocol storage networking portfolio.

Cisco MDS 9396S

The latest Cisco innovations include:

New MDS 9396S high density fabric switch
High performance 16Gb FICON support on MDS 9706 and 9250i
40Gb converged Ethernet support across Nexus 7700 and Nexus 7000 platforms
New enhancements to simplify SAN management and reduce operational cost

We are happy to see that our partners are also excited and looking forward to the arrival of the new Cisco MDS high density Fabric Switch. Cisco’s MDS product line is supported and sold by authorized original storage manufacturers (OSM). Special thanks to all our partners for their support and participation to make the launch successful.

Doug Fierro, senior director, Connectrix, EMC Corporation in his blog post “FC Customers Get Another 16Gb Boost” discusses about our customers need for simple, easy to configure, automated FC systems and how MDS 9396S addresses these requirements.

Krister Eriksson, senior product manager, NetApp, Inc., in his blog “Cisco Continues to Focus on its FC“, addresses the importance of keeping the FC roadmap fresh and invest in new platforms, while Derek Nguyen, strategic OEM accounts manager, Qlogic Corp., in his blog “QLogic FlexSuite Supports Cisco’s Latest MDS 9396S SAN Switch to Meet Growing Demand” analyzes how Cisco is enhancing its market MDS portfolio to provide high performance, versatile and affordable solutions for SMBs and enterprise customers.

New MDS 9396S multilayer fabric switch
The new 96-port 16G FC switch delivers density with enterprise capabilities and is an extension to the MDS 9148S Fabric switch.

MDS 9396S is being introduced as a response to the adoption of all flash storage and increase in data center storage demand. It is available in two configurations, 48-port base configuration with a pay-as-you-grow model to allow customers to upgrade to 96 ports in 12-port increments and 96-port fully configured base configuration for ease of ordering and installation.

SMB customers will find they have enough ports to connect all the server and storage ports to a couple of MDS 9396S switches for HA with room for future growth. While customers with larger SAN deployments can deploy the MDS 9396S as a Middle of Row switch and grow to hundreds of ports with fewer chassis.

Use cases include: shared storage, common backup, security, compliance, consolidation, virtualized storage and BC.

“In the past, Cisco MDS products have helped us scale and grow our storage infrastructure with consistent performance and manageability. Going forward, we are excited to see Cisco launching its next generation 16G High-density FC Switch MDS 9396S, as it will help us meet our growing customer demand for IT outsourcing services in the banking and financial services sector,” said Alessandro Spigaroli, head of project engineering and DC architecture, Cedacri SpA.

16G FICON and open system enhancements
Cisco is celebrating 11 years of System z FICON and open system support on the MDS Family. The company continues to innovate and support mainframe customer connectivity needs. The feature rich MDS 9000 platform makes a choice for mainframe customers with highest performance and reliability and for SAN extension utilizing 10G FCIP. Existing MDS 9700 and 9250i platforms now offer high performance 16G FICON capabilities, supporting FICON Distance Extension using 10G FCIP and specialized acceleration technologies. In addition, Cisco has collaborated with IBM to deliver rich capabilities to be supported on the new System z13 and beyond.

40G converged Ethernet support across Nexus 7700 and Nexus 7000
Currently, 40G converged Ethernet is already available on Nexus 5600 and Nexus 2300 platforms. Cisco here introduced 40G converged Ethernet support across Nexus 7700 and Nexus 7000 platforms so that customers have the flexibility to deploy 40G FCoE, NAS, iSCSI, IP-based object storage, and LAN connectivity on a single platform. With 10G/40G converged Ethernet deployed at the access, 16G line-rate FC deployed on MDS at the storage core, and 40GE spine-leaf architecture for IP storage traffic, customers can mix-and-match the various MDS, Cisco Nexus, and Cisco UCS products to build an efficient unified fabric architecture that can adapt to a customer’s future needs.

“We have deployed FCoE, and we are really excited about the launch of 40G FCoE on Nexus 7000. This will clearly help build greater architectural flexibility and massive scalability in our datacenter,” said Ed Diaz, network architecture, Adventist Health Systems.

New enhancements to simplify SAN management and reduce operational cost
New DCNM features will enhance SAN monitoring that help IT administrators avoid outages and reduce risk. New enhancements allow the IT administrator to be informed of the differences in the configuration between the storage array’s LUN masking database and the storage network’s zone database. Automated path redundancy feature automatically analyzes, every 24 hours and on demand, whether the redundant paths in each of the redundant SAN fabrics are maintaining best practices, thereby signaling any issues proactively.

More about DCNM features

Bottom Line
The newly refreshed Cisco storage portfolio support the traditional storage architectural requirements for block and file storage along with the new requirements to support big data and object storage for the cloud.