Cisco Bringing Out MDS 9710 Multilayer Director

As trends such as cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things generate rapidly increasing amounts of data for organizations and users to process and store, IT functions face an ever-increasing demand for better storage systems capable of coping with these trends.

           
Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director

To help them, Cisco Systems, Inc. announced new solutions for SANs (SANs) that deliver higher performance, scalability and reliability than other competing systems. The new solutions include the Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director, which delivers three times the bandwidth of any storage director in the industry.

The company also announced the Cisco MDS 9250i Multiservice Fabric Switch, which improves efficiency by performing important storage networking services in the SAN fabric.

Demand from enterprises for storage systems is growing rapidly. IDC estimates (March 2012) that storage needs will grow at a CAGR of 61.4% through 2015. As storage systems grow, so too does the need to better integrate these systems with other critical data center infrastructure such as networking and computing systems. Cisco calls its strategy for delivering this close integration the Unified Data Center.

Storage switching offerings are critical components of the data center networking portfolio – a portfolio spanning storage directors, switches, servers, central management and the company’s common OS, NX-OS. Together, this portfolio helps a  range of industries, from companies needing faster access to business metrics for better decision making, to medical caregivers accessing information on-demand in examination, treatment, surgical, and patient rooms.

The MDS 9710 Multilayer Director establishes a new benchmark for performance – delivering 24Tb/s of total switching capacity, almost three times the bandwidth of any director in the industry.

• Supports both high-density FC and FCoE, enabling consistent SAN and LAN networking operations.
• Provides storage connectivity for mission-critical applications, massive amounts of data, SSD and cloud-based environments without impacting current IT operations.
• Designed for growth without rip-and-replace upgrades, with 24Tb/s of total switching capacity for FC that can support growth.
• It builds on the MDS heritage of nonstop operations, including software upgrades, by providing high fault-tolerant capabilities with fully redundant (N+1) fans, switching fabrics, and power-supplies or grid redundancy (N:N).
• Enabling scalability for any SAN with the new 48-port 16GB FC and 48-port 10GB FCoE line cards, it up to 384 line-rate 16GB FC ports or FCoE in a single 14 RU chassis.
• Operational consistency is provided across the data center, enabling customers to use staff knowledge and existing processes to minimize change management when migrating to new platforms.

MDS 9250i Multiservice Fabric Switch
It delivers storage services, including Cisco I/O accelerator and Data Mobility Manager, which improve SAN efficiency by performing important storage services centrally in the fabric. This architecture reduces the time and resources required to perform common storage management functions and simplifies and accelerates data protection for regulatory compliance.

• Offers up to 40 line-rate ports of 16GB FC/FICON, 8 ports of 10 GE FCoE, and 2 ports of 1/10GE FCIP/iSCSI, while delivering a rich set of storage services via licensing.
• SAN Extension simplifies data protection and business continuance strategies by enabling backup, remote replication, and other disaster-recovery services over WAN distances using open-standards FCIP tunneling.
• Cisco I/O Accelerator (IOA) provides acceleration for MAN/WAN applications, and wire encryption for backup and replication operations, making DR and regulatory compliance  easier.
• Cisco Data Mobility Manager provides the ability to migrate data from LUN to LUN or array to array, quickly and without disruption of access to the data.

Availability
The MDS 9710 Multilayer Director is available; the MDS 9250i Multiservice Fabric Switch is scheduled to be available in Q3 2013. Cisco’s MDS Storage Networking product line is supported and resold by authorized original storage manufacturers.

"As the leading IT service provider in Norway, we look to Cisco as a key technology partner to support us in the process of consolidating and upgrading data centers. We require storage networks to support the next generation services and level of availability our customers demand," said Jo Marius Pedersen, SAN specialist, EVRY. "The converged management, predictable high performance, flexibility and reliability of the 16GB optimized Cisco MDS Multilayer 9710 has through thorough testing shown unprecedented results. The changing technology landscape, with its exponential data growth and increasing pressure to reduce cost and complexity, forces us to constantly balance innovative and known solutions. We can definitely recommend businesses with similar challenges to evaluate the innovative MDS platform."

"Today’s announcement cements Cisco’s technology leadership in the storage director market," said David Yen, SVP, data center group, Cisco. "Cisco continues to deliver the greatest depth and breadth for an end-to-end data center unified fabric. Together with our ecosystem of partners, we are reshaping the data center into an IT linchpin that transforms BC and operations for customers, one that is critical to today’s competitive business environments."