Cisco MDS 9000 Switches Resold by IBM

IBM Corp. is reselling the Cisco MDS 9000 family (2054 models) that adds the Cisco MDS 9000 16-Port Storage Services Node (SSN-16) as well as TCP/IP services and Input/Output (I/O) acceleration for the SSN-16.

The Cisco MDS 9513 (2054-E11) adds one new feature:

• FICON Package

The Cisco MDS 9500 family (2054-E04/E07/E11)
adds four new features:

• 16 Port Gigabit Ethernet SSN-16 Module
• MDS 9500 I/O Acceleration for 18/4 Module
• MDS 9500 FCIP Activation for SSN-16
• MDS 9500 I/O Acceleration for SSN-16

The Cisco MDS 9222i (2054-E01) adds five new features:

• 16 Port Gigabit Ethernet SSN-16 Module
• MDS 9222i I/O Acceleration for 18/4 Module
• MDS 9222i I/O Acceleration (Base Machine)
• MDS 9222i FCIP Activation for SSN-16
• MDS 9222i I/O Acceleration for SSN-16

The Cisco MDS 9000 family of Fabric Switch and Director Offerings, resold by IBM, now offers expanded capabilities, with the introduction of the Cisco MDS 9000 16-Port Storage Services Node (SSN-16). Four processors in the SSN-16 allow you up to a four-to-one performance increase over the existing 18/4 Multiservice Module (FN 2450) thereby helping to reduce slot requirements in Cisco MDS directors.

Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fibre Channel SSN-16 and Input/Output (I/O) acceleration features can help gain economies of scale in terms of slots and performance.

Many IT departments have consolidated their data centers and SANs, achieving efficiencies along the way. Large enterprises with consolidated SANs have hundreds or thousands of servers running business applications interconnecting through a common network fabric, making the network fabric a nexus from which to deploy solutions such as Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) activation and I/O acceleration.

The Cisco MDS 9000 16-Port Storage Services Node is designed to provide a high-performance, flexible, unified platform for deploying enterprise-class disaster recovery, business continuance, and intelligent fabric applications.

The Cisco MDS 9000 16-Port Storage Services Node hosts four independent service engines, which can each be individually and incrementally enabled to scale as business requirements change, or be configured to run separate applications. Based on the single service engine in the Cisco MDS 9000 18/4-Port Multiservice Module, this four-to-one consolidation can help deliver hardware savings and free slots in the Cisco MDS 9000 Series Multilayer Directors chassis.

The Cisco MDS 9000 16-Port Storage Services Node can integrate into the Cisco MDS 9500 Series Multilayer Directors and the Cisco MDS 9222i Multiservice Modular Switch. Each of the four service engines supports 4 Gigabit Ethernet IP storage services ports, for a total of 16 ports of FCIP connectivity. Traffic can be switched between an IP port and any Fibre Channel port on a Cisco MDS 9000 Family switch. The Cisco MDS 9000 16-Port Storage Services Node supports the full range of services available on other Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fibre Channel switching modules, including virtual SANs (VSANs), security, and traffic management.

The Cisco MDS 9000 16-Port Storage Services Node can help reduce latency for disk and tape with FCIP acceleration features, including FCIP write acceleration, and FCIP tape write and read acceleration.

Multiple Gigabit Ethernet ports within a single engine or across service engines can be grouped into a Port Channel of up to 16 links for high availability and increased aggregate throughput. Port Channels can also be enabled for FCIP tape read and write acceleration by running the optional Cisco MDS 9000 I/O Accelerator (IOA) Package on a service engine anywhere in the fabric.

The FICON Package includes four 8 Gb 24-port blades, 96 4 Gb longwave SFP transceivers, and the Mainframe Server Package in a single feature number (#1000) for the Cisco MDS 9513 (2054-E11).

Key prerequisites: Requires Cisco MDS NX-OS 4.2(1), or later.

Planned availability date: February 19, 2010