Cisco boosts its storage area network (SAN) solutions by upgrading director-class and multiservice switches-- launching the MDS 9710 Multilayer Director and MDS 9250i Multiservice Fabric Switch.
The MDS 9710 supports file or block services, including high-density fibre channel and FCoE, enabling SAN and LAN networking operations over the same platform. It offers up to 24Tbps of total switching capacity (up from 256Gbps of the earlier 9500 series) with fault-tolerant capabilities including fully redundant (N+1) fans, switching fabrics and power-supplies or grid redundancies.
Enabling SAN scalability via 48-port 16GB fibre channel and 46-port 10GB FcoE line cards, the MDS 9710 supports up to 384 line-rate 16 GB fibre channel ports or FCoE in a single 14 RU chassis.
Meanwhile the MDS 9250i multiservice fabric switch delivers storage services (including Cisco I/O accelerator and data Mobility Manager) with up to x40 16GB FC/FICON line-rate ports and either x8 10 GE FCoE or x2 1/10GE FCIP/iSCSI ports.
Both MDS 9710 and MDS 9250i ship ready for use in preconfigured SANs such as the VCE Vblock, Hitachi HDS Reference Architecture and NetApp FlexPod. The MDS 9710 is available now, and the MDS 9250i should be available by Q3 2013.