Cisco SAN Offerings Address Demands for Speed, Visibility and Simplicity

by Tony Antony, senior marketing manager, Cisco Technology, Inc.

Faster, smarter, and simpler. It’s what technology users want, according to Gartner, Inc., CIO Magazine, and technology pundits. And we want those things in all areas of our lives, in and outside of tech. All technology vendors are striving to adapt their solutions and products to meet these demands.

Storage customers are no exception. More diverse and sophisticated applications and services continue to come online, resulting in management complexity and rampant data proliferation. The IT infrastructure and storage administration teams we work with at Cisco are looking for innovative tools to tame their complicated operational issues.

With the current complexity, organizations have even less time to devote to rote management tasks such as zoning, troubleshooting and operational validations.

To help our customers overcome these challenges, Cisco announced:

32Gb FC fixed-configuration switches with FC-NVMe support and auto-zoning capabilites for rapid and self-service provisioning.
MDS Diagnostics Suite features for enhanced visibility and troubleshooting capabilities.
Simplified SAN management with DCNM 11.0 for end-to-end management.

Rapid, self-provisioning switches
The company offers two MDS 32Gb fixed switches (48-port MDS 9148T and 96-port MDS 9396T) equipped with features for increased agility and performance such as:

Auto-zoning: Facilitates the detection of new host and storage devices that log into a SAN and automatically zones them without having to do manual zone configuration.
Integrated telemetry: Allows SAN admins to stay on top of all-flash array performance objectives by proactively monitoring workloads to identify issues that could affect I/O performance. Software support will follow in the near future.
Enterprise-class in fixed form factor: Delivers all the functionalities typically only found in high-end MDS modular directors in 1 and 2RU form factors.

Fabric-wide visibility
Significant updates to the company’s MDS Diagnostic Suite provide users with enhanced visibility at the edges as well as the core of their SAN fabric. This is critical to guarantee continuous fabric availability for a diverse set of apps and workloads in the modern enterprise. Fabric-wide visibility is achieved through new features such as Multipath Trace, Link Cable Beacon and Read Diagnostic Parameter designed to be used for troubleshooting at the fabric edge. Other key features include Congestion Avoidance and Isolation, ISL Diagnostics, HBA Diagnostics, B2B Credit Recovery, and enabling enhanced visibility at the core for quick resolution of fabric wide issues.

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Simplified SAN management
Consolidating SAN management reduces the complexity of data center network operations, reducing the overall cost of operations and freeing up additional resources. This is what the new version of the Data Center Network Manager (v11) is designed to do.

DCNM 11.0 includes an enhanced UI to improve support and management of MDS product line.

Other enhancements include:

License management: Provides an interface for switch-based license installation, reducing the time to install/ upgrade MDS switches.
Device management: Complete redesign of the VSAN management feature, Port Channel management and Device Manager Integration within the web user interface, as well as continued enhancements to FC zoning management to improve alignment with typical customer workflows.
Topology management: Simplifies end-to-end topology management by including virtual machine manager visualization on the topology within context.