Cisco Storage Networking Innovations for Agile Data Center

Industry trends like the IoT, mobility, cloud, and big data analytics are driving different types of storage protocols and architectural requirements as well as increased application workloads in the IT environments. Meanwhile, infrastructure trends such as server virtualization, storage growth, and flash storage are also driving increased workloads in the IT environments. With such dynamic transitions at play, it is critical that customers design an efficient, adaptable infrastructure based on best-of-breed components rather than getting locked into separate, inflexible silos for each application.

Cisco Systems, Inc. is announcing multi-protocol storage networking innovations across MDS and Nexus product lines to support Data Center strategy of helping customers design efficient IT operations that can adapt over time to changing business needs.

Cisco MDS 9396S

The MDS 9396S Fabric switch expands company’s line-rate 16Gb FC family – which already includes MDS 9710 and MDS 9706 directors, the MDS 9148S fabric switch, and the MDS 9250i storage services switch. This 96-port high-density 16Gb line-rate fabric switch enables operational simplicity for SMB and enterprise customers thru consolidation, as it allows deployment of shared storage, common backup and BC solutions in a small footprint while still leaving room for future growth.

Cisco MDS 9706

Company’s existing MDS 9700 and 9250i platforms offer the performance 16Gb FICON capabilities while supporting FICON Distance Extension using 10GbE FCIP and specialized acceleration technologies. In addition, Cisco has collaborated with IBM to deliver rich capabilities to be supported on the  IBM System z13 and beyond. Cisco is celebrating 11 years of System z FICON and Open System support on the MDS Family.

Cisco Nexus 7700 Series

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

Cisco Nexus 7000 Series

MDS 9396S multilayer fabric switch

• Versatility – order only as much as needed

• Maximum flexibility with a 48-port base configuration – pay-as-you-grow model allows upgrades in 12-port increments up to a total of 96 ports

• Configured 96-port base configuration available for ease of ordering and installation

• Architectural simplicity and manageability

• Enough ports in a chassis, so that SMB customers can connect all the server and storage ports to a couple of MDS 9396S switches (for HA), with room for future growth.

• Building block for larger deployments, as customers can deploy MDS 9396S as a Top of Rack/ Middle of Row switch and grow to hundreds of ports in only a few chassis.

Ease of use

• Power on Auto Provisioning (POAP) and Configuration Wizard for plug and play deployments.

• Consistent operations across MDS, Nexus, and  UCS Fabric Interconnect platforms as they are all powered by the same NX-OS OS.

• Enterprise capabilities available – such as up to 4K B2B credits on a port, Hardware-based Congestion Detection and Recovery, Virtual SANs (VSANs), Inter-VSAN Routing (IVR), N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) core, N-Port Virtualization (NPV), and 1+1 redundant Fans and Power Supplies.

Extended 16Gb FICON support on MDS family

• Highest Performance 16Gb FICON Portfolio

• Cisco MDS 9710: 384 16Gb Line-rate Ports

• Cisco MDS 9706: 192 16Gb Line-rate Ports

• FICON and Open Systems supported on same MDS 9700 Switch

• FICON Distance Extension

• 10G FCIP Extension on Cisco MDS 9250i

• Specialized FICON Protocol Acceleration for Tape and Disk Mirroring

IBM System z13 Integration

• Support for z13 FICON capabilities including FICON Dynamic Routing (EBR) and 16Gb Forward Error Correction (FEC).

Feature enhancements

• FICON QOS exploitation

• Support for System z13 health checker / CUP enhancements

• FICON support for future FCIP solutions

• FICON support for future 32G capabilities

40 Gigabit converged Ethernet for Nexus 7700 and Nexus 7000 series switches:

• Available on Nexus 7700 F3-Series 24-port 40 GbE Module for Nexus 7700 18-slot, 10-slot, 6-slot, and 2-slot Series of Switches. With 960-Gbps of bandwidth, the Nexus 7700 F3-Series 24-Port 40 GbE Module offers the highest storage networking performance for FC traffic in the industry.

• Available on Nexus 7000 F3-Series 12-port 40 GbE Module for  Nexus 7000 18-slot, 10-slot, 6-slot, and 2-slot series of switches. The large already installed base of Nexus 7000 switches can now be used to deploy 40 Gigabit Converged Ethernet.

• Enables convergence of 10/40Gbt line-rate storage traffic in a multipathing spine-leaf architecture

Enhancements to simplify SAN management and reduce operational cost

• End-to-end visibility and monitoring: End-to-end visibility into virtual server, compute, network, SAN, and storage environments. New enhancements inform IT administrators of the differences in configuration between the storage array’s LUN masking database and the SAN’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, to proactively flag any issues.

• Custom application port groups: Enables SAN administrators to independently monitor and generate performance reports and threshold-based alerts for user-definable groups of ports situated anywhere in the storage network.

• Hardware-based congestion detection and avoidance: The dedicated hardware-based FC congestion detection and recovery logic, available across all MDS 16Gb products, provides precise, fast detection and user-configurable automatic, real-time recovery from potential slow drain conditions in the SAN. An enhancement to the Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) tool enables it to monitor and report slow-drain conditions across the entire fabric.

The MDS 9396S Multilayer Fabric Switch, the new extended 16Gb FICON capabilities, and the new SAN management enhancements will be available in July 2015. The 40Gb Converged Ethernet for Nexus 7700 and Nexus 7000 Series switches will be available in June 2015. MDS Storage Networking product line is supported and resold by authorized original storage manufacturers.

“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 project engineering and DC architecture, Cedacri S.p.A.

“We have deployed FCoE, and we are really excited about the launch of 40Gb 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.