New Cisco Storage Networking Innovations for the Agile Data Center

Data is not just multiplying at an astounding rate. It is also changing dramatically in nature.  Trends like the Internet of Things, Mobility, Cloud, and Big Data Analytics are driving the adoption of different types of storage protocols and architectural requirements as well as increased application workloads in the IT environments.

To help customers design efficient IT operations that can adapt over time to changing business needs, Cisco is announcing new additions and innovations to the Cisco MDS and Nexus Multi-Protocol storage networking portfolio. The latest Cisco innovations include:

New Cisco MDS 9396S High Density Fabric Switch

Highest Performance 16G FICON support on MDS 9706 and 9250i

40G Converged Ethernet support across Nexus 7700 and Nexus 7000 platforms

New Enhancements to simplify SAN Management and reduce Operational Cost

To learn more, please attend Webinar on June 23rd 8:00 PST

We are happy to see that our Partners are also equally excited and looking forward to the arrival of the new Cisco MDS high density Fabric Switch.  Cisco’s MDS product line is supported and sold by authorized original storage manufacturers (OSM).  Special thanks to all our partners for their support and participation to make the launch successful.

Doug Fierro, Senior Director, Connectrix, EMC Corporation in his blog post ‘ Fibre Channel Customers Get Another 16Gb Boost’ discusses about our customers need for simple, easy to configure, automated FC systems and how Cisco MDS 9396S addresses these requirements. Krister Eriksson, Senior Product Manager, NetApp in his blog ‘Cisco Continues to Focus on its Fibre Channel’, addresses the importance of keeping the Fibre Channel roadmap fresh and  invest in new platforms, while Derek Nguyen, Strategic OEM Accounts Manager, Qlogic, in his blog ‘ QLogic FlexSuite Supports Cisco’s Latest MDS 9396S SAN Switch to Meet Growing Demand ‘  analyzes how  Cisco is enhancing its market leading MDS portfolio  to provide high performance, versatile and affordable solutions for SMBs and Enterprise customers.

New Cisco MDS 9396S Multilayer Fabric Switch: The new versatile and affordable 96 port 16G FC switch delivers industry leading density with enterprise class capabilities and is an extension to the already successful MDS 9148S Fabric Switch.

Explore MDS 9396S with Saptarshi Sengupta  (Sr. Product Manager )& Lauren Friedman (Influence Marketing)

So why Cisco MDS 9396S?  MDS 9396S is being introduced as a response to the adoption of all flash storage and increase in Data Center Storage demand. The MDS 9396S is available in two configurations, 48-Port base configuration with a pay-as-you-grow model to allow customers to upgrade to 96 ports in 12-port increments and 96-port fully configured base configuration for ease of ordering and installation.

SMB customers will find they have enough ports to connect all the server and storage ports to a couple of MDS 9396S switches for high availability with room for future growth. While customers with larger SAN deployments can deploy the MDS 9396S as a Middle of Row switch and grow to hundreds of ports with fewer chassis.

Use cases include: shared storage, common backup, security, compliance, consolidation, virtualized storage and business continuity.

“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 Fiber Channel Switch MDS 9396S, as it will help us meet our growing customer demand for IT outsourcing services in the banking and financial services sector”-  Alessandro Spigaroli, Head of Project Engineering and DC Architecture at Cedacri

16G FICON and Open System Enhancements

Cisco is celebrating 11 years of System z FICON and Open System support on the MDS Family. Cisco continues to innovate and support mainframe customer connectivity needs. The feature rich MDS 9000 platform makes an ideal choice for mainframe customers with highest performance and reliability and for SAN extension utilizing 10G FCIP. Cisco’s existing MDS 9700 and 9250i platforms now offer the highest performance 16G FICON capabilities in the industry, supporting FICON Distance Extension using 10G FCIP and specialized acceleration technologies.  In addition, Cisco has collaborated with IBM to deliver rich capabilities to be supported on the new IBM System z13 and beyond.

40G Converged Ethernet support across Nexus 7700 and Nexus 7000

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

Watch this video by Rudra Roy(Sr. Product Manager ) & Lauren Friedman (Influence Marketing) to learn about new FCoE enhancements.

“We have deployed Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and we are really excited about the launch of 40G FCoE on Nexus 7000. This will clearly help build greater architectural flexibility and massive scalability in our datacenter.” – Ed Diaz, Network Architecture at Adventist Health Systems

New Enhancements to simplify SAN Management and reduce Operational Cost

New DCNM features will enhance SAN monitoring that help IT administrators avoid outages and reduce risk. New enhancements allow the IT administrator to be informed of the differences in the configuration between the Storage Array’s LUN masking database and the Storage Network’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, thereby signaling any issues proactively. Learn more about DCNM features: www.cisco.com/go/dcnm

Bottom Line

The newly refreshed Cisco Storage portfolio support the traditional storage architectural requirements for block and file storage along with the new requirements to support big data and object storage for the cloud.

This is the right time to refresh, upgrade or build your next generation SAN or Converged LAN/SAN infrastructure using Cisco’s 16G FC portfolio including 96 port high-density Fabric Switch MDS 9396S, along with newly introduced 40G FCoE Line Cards installed in Nexus 7700 and 7000 series chassis. Upgrade your Data Center’s mainframe connectivity with MDS 9706 and 9250i for either switch based FICON support or cascaded FICON support. Finally make your Data Center operationally simple, easily manageable and downtime proof using Cisco’s Data Center Network Manager software with simple, intuitive plug-and-play capability.  Cisco is a leader in providing both choice and value for server and storage connectivity!

For more info: www.cisco.com/go/mds

Mark your calendar to  attend live Webinar on June 23rd 8:00 PST  .  See you all on June 23rd!

Partner Blogs

EMC blog: Fibre Channel Customers Get Another 16Gb Boost, Doug Fierro, Senior Director, Connectrix, EMC Corporation

NetApp Blog: Cisco Continues to Focus on its Fibre Channel, NetApp  Krister Eriksson, Senior Product Manager, NetApp

QLogic Blog: QLogic FlexSuite Supports Cisco’s Latest MDS 9396S SAN Switch to Meet Growing Demand, Derek Nguyen, Strategic OEM Accounts Manager

Tony Antony
Sr Marketing Manager