Cisco Storage Networking Innovations

This text was published on Cisco data center blog by Tony Antony, senior marketing manager, Cisco Systems, Inc.

The SAN Also Rises: Cisco Delivers Storage Networking Innovations
to Support High Data Growth, Scale and Programmability
 
New user demands and shifting application requirements impose higher demands on data center, cloud and storage infrastructure, requiring a transformative new approach that is simpler, more agile, high performance and cost-effective. To help customers grow, consolidate, converge and to adapt to changing business needs, Cisco is announcing new additions to its Cisco MDS, UCS and Nexus portfolios.

The latest Cisco innovations include:

• Cisco MDS 9718 Director – The industry’s highest port density SAN director (aka ‘The Beast’)scales up to 768 ports of 16Gb FC. It is also first 32Gb-ready SAN director and first SAN director to support native REST API calls directly to the switch.
• 40Gb FCoE Module for MDS 9700 – Customers can now upgrade their SAN fabric between access and core to 40Gb speeds, industry’s fastest interconnect speed for SAN Inter Switch Links (ISL). For FC customers 40Gb ISLs’ are efficient providing 194% higher bandwidth compared to 16Gb FC and 47% higher bandwidth compared to 32Gb FC ISL.
• Nexus 5672UP-16G – Offering FC, FCoE and Ethernet convergence from a single platform, and the complementary Nexus 2348UPQ Fabric Extender, with support for FC along with multiprotocol storage and LAN connectivity. Nexus 2348UPQ bring FEX capability to FC SANs.
• The Unified Computing System (UCS) Fabric Interconnect 6300 Series features two new 1RU 40Gb/16Gb FC switches and a new 40Gb/16Gb FC Fabric Extender. The new Fabric Interconnect enables 40Gb FCoE, and 16Gb FC to further bandwidth capacity and provide low latency and lossless fabric, with performance improvements
• Programmability: Latest REST API implementation of Cisco NX-OS allowing programmatic acess to MDS, aiding simpler scripting ad more effective programming.

A special thanks to all our partners for their support and participation to make the launch successful. Cisco’s MDS product line is supported and sold by authorized original storage manufacturers. We are pleased that all of our partners are looking forward for the arrival of the new high density MDS 9718 Director along with the other innovations. Cisco is also working closely with flash storage partners to bring customers better efficiency and flexibility and built a network that last for the next decade. High performance SAN and flash storage arrays are match made in heaven; our flash storage partners are equally excited about the introduction of new MDS 9718, providing real value to our customers.

Doug Fierro, senior director, Connectrix, EMC Corporation, in his blog post Cisco introduces Connectrix MDS 9718 High Density, High Performance Director discusses the struggle to support growing applications while fighting for every square inch of available storage space, and how Cisco addresses the growing pains of storage networking.

Derek Nguyen, strategic OEM accounts manager, QLogic Corp., in his blog, Cisco and QLogic Deliver the Ultimate Combination using 16Gb FC Technology, describes how Cisco’s new MDS 9718 director switch, along with QLogic 16Gb FC solutions, and StorFusion technology, deliver on our joint promises, meet customers stringent requirements, and continue to stay a step ahead.

Jennifer Dion, senior alliances manager, Broadcom Limited, in her post Why Managing Corporate Data Makes You Captain Kirk, says: “When it comes to managing your company’s files, your experience might be like Captain Kirk’s problems at Deep Space Station K7 and how joint Cisco and Broadcom solutions saves the day.“

In his blog, Cisco Networking Innovations Complement Nimble’s Next-Gen Flash Platform Matt Miller, solutions marketing, Nimble Storage, Inc.  explains the long history of developing joint solutions that combine the power of next-generation flash storage with Cisco’s compute and networking technology.

Mayur Dewaikar, senior product manager, Pure Storage, Inc., in his blog Pure Storage Congratulates Cisco on the Launch of the MDS 9718, Industry’s Highest Port Density Switch, salutes the launch of the Cisco MDS 7618, highest port density switch.

Ramesh Chitor, senior director, business development, Tegile Systems, Inc., in his blog How do you build a SAN to last 10 years? welcomes Cisco’s expansion of the MDS 9000 family to include the MDS 9718 director switch into the Cisco MDS 9700 series, the first SAN director to support RESTful APIs.

Mike Jochimsen, director of alliances, Kaminario Technologies, Ltd, in his blog Kaminario K2 and Cisco Storage Networking – Addressing the Customer Data Deluge analyzes how Cisco solution when combined with the storage efficiency and flexibility of Kaminario’s K2 all-flash arrays, enable customers to meet their expanding storage and network traffic needs.
 
Global customers are also embracing Cisco’s new Storage Networking developments. For example, China Guangfa Bank, which has 37 branches and more than 700 Business outlets across 76 cities in China, has used the high performing Cisco MDS 9513 Directors for the past 7 years. With rapidly growing data requirements, and a current storage capacity exceeding 2.4PB, the new MDS 9718 will help them meet growing customer demands.
 
Krones AG, in the bottling and packaging industry, services customers worldwide through three data centers hosting over 1,000 VMs that support more than 4.8TB of data.  Krones currently uses the MDS 9700s to aggregate links and optimize bandwidth utilization as they scale, and is looking forward to implementing Cisco Data Center Network Manager for better visibility and scalability in their data centers
 
Grow and consolidate SAN Environments using Cisco MDS 9718 Director
The Cisco MDS 9718 director is the highest port density director with 768 line rate 16Gb FC ports that enable consolidation, the  is for mid to large storage network deployments. It is also first 32Gb-ready SAN director and first SAN director to support native REST API calls directly to the switch. Its collapsed core architecture reduces the number of managed switches for easy management, and REST API programmability provides for rapid provisioning and room for future growth.

 
More about RESTAPI support on MDS 9700 directors (video)
 
The Cisco MDS 9718 director is 32Gb-ready, customers can use it for 16Gb connectivity today and when they need 32Gb in the future, they can seamlessly transition to 32Gb with a software upgrade and addition of the 32Gb line card. Its designed and architected to support the requirements of today’s and tomorrow’s large virtualized data center storage requirements, for either flash- or cloud-based services. It gives customers the benefits of high performance, high reliability, high density, flexibility and scale, and they can grow and consolidate by reducing cost.
 
Raising the bar for datacenter convergence:
Cisco Nexus 5672UP-16G and Nexus 2348UPQ
Cisco continue to innovate Nexus 5K and introduced the Nexus 5672UP-16G platform that makes a choice for convergence, enabling 16Gb FC, 40Gb FCoE and 40Gb Ethernet all from the same platform. It supports 24 ports of 8/16Gb FC, 6 ports of 40Gb FCoE and 24 ports of 1/10GbE. The new Nexus 2348UPQ complements the Nexus 5672-16, enabling scale and support for FC, FCoE and Ethernet, while reducing space, cost and increase manageability, helping customers to deploy truly converged fabrics.
 
The Nexus 5672 is a highly versatile platform for multiprotocol storage (supporting iSCSI, NAS, FC, FCoE) and LAN connectivity for converged and hyper-converged clouds.
 
New Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect 6300 Series and Fabric Extender 2304
The Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect 6300 Series employs the UCS Fabric, VIC and UCS Manager to enable a high-performance, low latency and lossless fabric architecture for high capacity data centers. It adds to Cisco’s Fabric Interconnect 6200 series to deploy 40Gb, 40Gb FCoE, and 16Gb FC to further bandwidth capacity and provide for an adaptable data center fabric. The 6300 Series offers a 2.6X increase in throughput, 3X lower latency and  high-density 40GbE ports that enable an end-to-end 40Gb solution. 

UCS FI can be used for 40Gb FCoE or 16Gb FC and enable easy transition to high capacity infrastructure. The Cisco UCS Classic 5108 Modular Chassis connects to a pair of Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects with UCS Manager, providing easy, fast scalability with UCS management.
 
40Gb FCoE end-to-end and ISL connectivity for SAN
Currently Cisco supports 40Gb FCoE on all Nexus Platforms, and with today’s announcement of 40Gb FCoE Module on MDS 9700 and 40Gb FCoE support on UCS Fabric Interconnect, Cisco now completes the 40Gb offering across Nexus, MDS and UCS product portfolio. The most popular use case for 40Gb is to enable 40Gb inter switch links between access and core. Cisco now offers the highest interconnect speed for SAN ISL: 40Gb provides 194% higher ISL bandwidth compared to 16Gb FC, and 47% higher ISL bandwidth compared to 32Gb FC.
 
Bottom Line
The newly refreshed Cisco storage portfolio enables to grow, converge and consolidate SANs efficiently. The time is now to refresh, upgrade or build your next generation Converged LAN/SAN infrastructure using Cisco’s 16Gb storage portfolio including Nexus 5672-16G, Nexus 2348UPQ, UCS Fabric Interconnect and  MDS 9718 along with 40Gb FCoE end to end support on Cisco Data Center portfolio. The REST API implementation of Cisco NXOS, allows for HTTP-based programmatic access to MDS. NX-API provides the configuration and management capabilities of the Cisco NX-OS CLI with web-based APIs, aiding simpler script-ability and more effective programmability to enable wide ranging use cases.
 
With 1/10Gb Converged Ethernet deployed at the access, 16Gbline-rate FC deployed on Cisco MDS at the storage core, and 40GbE architecture for IP storage traffic, as well as 40Gb FCoE, customers can mix-and-match the various Cisco MDS, Cisco Nexus, and Cisco UCS products to build an efficient unified fabric architecture that can adapt to future needs. Cisco provides both choice and value for server and storage connectivity.