Cisco Storage Networking Innovations to support high data growth and scale

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 and innovations 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 16G FC. Cisco MDS 9718 is also Industry’s first 32G-ready SAN Director and Industry’s first SAN Director to support native REST API calls directly to the switch.

New 40G FCoE Module for MDS 9700 -Customers can now upgrade their SAN fabric between access and core to 40G speeds; Industry’s fastest interconnect speed for SAN Inter Switch Links (ISL). For FC customers 40G ISLs’ are very efficient providing 194% higher bandwidth compared to 16G FC and 47% higher bandwidth compared to 32G 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 Fibre Channel (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 40G/16G FC switches and a new 40G/16G FC Fabric Extender. The new Fabric Interconnect enables 40G FCoE, and 16Gb FC to further bandwidth capacity and provide low latency and lossless fabric, with dramatic performance improvements

Programmability: Latest REST API implementation of Cisco NX-OS allowing programmatic access to MDS, aiding simpler scripting and more effective programming.

To learn more, Please attend the webinar on Feb 23rd 8:00 PST – Register now.

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 (OSM).  We are very 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, in his blog, “ Cisco and QLogic Deliver the Ultimate Combination using 16Gb Fibre Channel 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,  explains the long history of developing joint solutions that combine the power of next-generation flash storage with Cisco’s industry-leading compute and networking technology.

Mayur Dewaikar, Sr. Product Manager, Pure Storage, 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, Industry’s Highest Port Density Switch

Ramesh Chitor, Senior Director, Business Development, Tegile, 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, 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 2.4 PB, the new MDS 9718 will help them meet growing customer demands.

Krones,  the market leader in the bottling and packaging industry, services customers worldwide through three data centers hosting over 1000 Virtual Machines that support more than 4.8 TB 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 your SAN Environments using Cisco MDS 9718 Director

The Cisco MDS 9718 Director is the industry’s highest port density Director with 768 line rate 16G Fiber Channel ports that enable consolidation, the  is ideal for mid to large storage network deployments. It is also  Industry’s first 32G-ready SAN Director and Industry’s 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.

Watch this Video to learn more about the RESTAPI support on MDS 9700 directors.

The Cisco MDS 9718 Director is 32G-ready, customers can use it for 16G connectivity today and when they need 32G in the future, they can seamlessly transition to 32G with a software upgrade and addition of the 32G line card.  Its designed and architected to support  the stringent requirements of today’s and tomorrow’s large virtualized data center storage requirements, for either Flash or Cloud based services. Cisco MDS 9718 gives customers the enhanced 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 today we introduced the new  Nexus 5672UP-16G platform that  makes an ideal choice for convergence, enabling 16G FC, 40G FCoE and 40G Ethernet all from the same platform.  It supports  24 ports of 8/16G FC,  6 ports of 40G FCoE and  24 ports of 1/10 Ethernet.  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. The Fabric Interconnect 6300 series adds to Cisco’s successful Fabric Interconnect 6200 series to deploy 40Gb, 40G 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 40 Gigabit solution.

UCS FI can be used for 40G FCoE or 16G 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 industry-leading UCS management.

40G FCoE end-to-end and ISL connectivity for SAN

Currently Cisco supports 40G FCoE on all Nexus Platforms, and with today’s announcement of 40G FCoE Module on MDS 9700 and 40G FCoE support on UCS Fabric Interconnect, Cisco now completes the 40G offering across Nexus, MDS and UCS product portfolio.   The most popular use case for 40G  is to enable 40G inter switch links  between access and core.

Cisco now offers the Industry’s highest interconnect speed for SAN ISL: 40G provides 194% higher ISL bandwidth compared to 16G FC, and  47% higher ISL bandwidth compared to 32G FC

Bottom Line

The newly refreshed Cisco Storage portfolio enables you to grow, converge and consolidate storage area networks efficiently.   The time is now to refresh, upgrade or build your next generation Converged LAN/SAN infrastructure using Cisco’s 16G storage portfolio including Nexus 5672-16G, Nexus 2348UPQ, UCS Fabric Interconnect and  MDS 9718 along with 40G 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 10/40 Gigabit Converged Ethernet deployed at the access, 16G line-rate FC deployed on Cisco MDS at the storage core, and 40 Gigabit Ethernet architecture for IP storage traffic, as well as 40 Gigabit FCoE, 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 future needs.  Cisco is the leader in providing both choice and value for server and storage connectivity!

For more info:  Storage Networking

To learn more, Please attend the webinar on Feb 23rd 8:00 PST – Register now.

Tony Antony
Sr. Marketing Manager