Cisco MDS 9000 Series Hardware

Cisco MDS 9000 multilayer SAN switches combine a robust, flexible hardware architecture with multiple layers of network and storage-management intelligence. You can use Cisco MDS 9000 Series Multilayer Switches to build highly available, scalable storage networks with advanced security, and unified management.

The Cisco MDS 9000 Family comprises of following hardware products:

Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors

Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Director class SAN switches supports 16-Gbps, 32-Gbps, and 64Gbps Fibre Channel switching modules. The high port density SAN director addresses storage requirements for large, virtualized data centers. These switches provide excellent availability, security, and scalability; simplified management; and the ability to flexibly integrate new technologies. Cisco MDS 9700 provides Ansible support for automated SAN provisioning and management. The MDS 9700 lets you transparently deploy unified fabrics with Fibre Channel, IBM Fibre Connection (FICON), and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity with a low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Table 8-2 summarizes the Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors chassis form factors available at the time of this writing.

Table 8-2 Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors chassis

Figure 8-1 Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors

Designed to integrate multiprotocol switching and routing, intelligent SAN services, and storage applications onto highly scalable SAN switching platforms, the Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor Modules enables intelligent, resilient, scalable, and secure high-performance multilayer SAN switching solutions.

Table 8-3 summarizes the Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors Supervisor Modules available at the time of this writing.

Table 8-3 Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors Supervisor Modules

Figure 8-2 Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor Modules

With industry-leading port densities of line‑rate 16-Gbps Fibre Channel ports per director chassis, intelligent fabric services such as integrated VSANs, Inter-VSAN Routing (IVR), and PortChannels, the Cisco MDS 9700 48-Port 16-Gbps Fibre Channel Switching Module enables deployment of large, scalable, and virtualized data centers. The Cisco MDS 9700 48-Port 16-Gbps Fibre Channel Switching Module is designed for the most demanding storage networking environments. It delivers full-duplex aggregate performance of 768 Gbps, making it well suited for high-speed 16-Gbps storage subsystems, 16-Gbps Inter-Switch Links (ISLs), and high-performance virtualized servers. The Cisco MDS 9700 48-Port 16-Gbps Fibre Channel Switching Module also provides Cisco VMpath technology that enables advanced virtual machine-aware SAN provisioning and monitoring for virtualized data centers. With Cisco VMpath, you can monitor, manage, and control SAN resource allocation and performance on a per-virtual machine basis, and map paths all the way from the server to storage enabling end-to-end tracking of mission-critical workloads.

The 32-Gbps 48-port Fibre Channel switching module provides 768 line-rate 32-Gbps Fibre Channel ports per director meeting the high-performance needs for flash-memory and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) over Fibre Channel workloads. It offers innovative services including virtual machine awareness, on-board Fibre Channel analytics engine, E-port and F-port diagnostics, integrated VSANs, Inter-VSAN Routing (IVR), and port channels. It delivers full-duplex aggregate performance of 1536 Gbps, making it well suited for high-speed 32-Gbps storage subsystems, 32-Gbps Inter-Switch Links (ISLs), high-performance virtualized servers, and all-flash and NVMe arrays. This switching module ships with a built-in analytics engine. The engine can analyze real-time Fibre Channel exchanges and report on various metrics in detail, enabling comprehensive and timely monitoring of any potential performance problems among SAN edge devices.

The 64-Gbps 48-port Fibre Channel switching module meets the high-performance needs for Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) over Fibre Channel and flash memory storage. It offers innovative services including full end-to-end NVMe support, onboard advanced Fibre Channel analytics engine, virtual machine awareness, Dynamic Rate Limiting Ingestion (DIRL), E-port and F-port diagnostics, integrated VSANs, Advanced Inter-VSAN Routing (IVR), and port channels. It delivers full-duplex aggregate performance of 3072 Gbps, making it well suited for high-speed 64-Gbps storage subsystems, 64-Gbps Inter-Switch Links (ISLs), high-performance virtualized servers, and NVMe and all-flash arrays.

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