Description

Cisco MDS9710 Multilayer Director Ghana

Cisco MDS9710 Ghana Multilayer Director deploys Fiber Channel, IBM Fiber Connectivity (FICON), Fiber Channel over IP (FCIP), and Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) on a single fabric. Cisco MDS9710 Ghana meet the stringent requirements of large virtualized storage environments. Enabling enterprise clouds, transformation of large storage networks lowering the operating costs.  As a director-class SAN switch, the Cisco MDS9710 Ghana uses the same operating system and management interface as other Cisco data center switches. It brings intelligent capabilities to a high-performance, protocol-independent switch fabric. You’ll gain uncompromising availability, security, and scalability; simplified management; and the capability to flexibly integrate new technologies.

Features

Outstanding speed

 The combination of the 16-Gbps, 32-Gbps Fiber Channel switching module and Cisco MDS9710 Ghana Crossbar Switching Fabric-3 Module enables up to 3.5 Terabits per second (Tbps) of front-panel Fiber Channel throughput between modules in each direction for each of the eight Cisco MDS9710 Ghana payload slots. Based on central arbitration and a crossbar fabric, the MDS 9710 architecture provides line-rate, nonblocking, predictable performance for all traffic conditions for every port up to the future 64-Gbps speed in the chassis.

High availability

 Get best-in-class availability. The Cisco MDS9710 Ghana is the first director-class switch in which all major components, even the fabric card, are redundant. Obtain grid redundancy with the power supply and 1+1 redundant supervisor and add another fabric card to enable N+1 fabric redundancy (32-Gbps). The MDS 9710 combines non-disruptive software upgrades, stateful process restart and failover, and full redundancy of all major components for best-in-class availability.

Fully integrated SAN analytics

 This Cisco MDS9710 Ghana switch also offers state-of-the-art SAN analytics and telemetry capabilities that have been built into this next-generation hardware platform. This new state-of-the-art technology couples the next-generation port ASIC with a fully dedicated network processor (NPU) designed to complete analytics calculations in real time on the 32-Gbps line card. This new capability is extended due to the hardware capabilities of the 48-port 32-Gbps line card (DS-X9648-1536K9). The telemetry data extracted from the inspection of the frame headers are calculated on board (within the switch) and, using an industry-leading open format, can be streamed to any analytics-visualization platform.

Industry-leading scalability

 Power the largest storage environments with up to 24 Tbps of Fiber Channel bandwidth. A single chassis delivers 384 2/4/8-Gbps, 4/8/16-Gbps, 8/16/32-Gbps full line-rate, or 10-Gbps full line-rate autosensing Fiber Channel over Ethernet ports, and a single rack supports up to 1152 Fiber Channel ports.

Future readiness

 With the long-lasting chassis, customers have the flexibility of doing in-place, online upgrades to the new fabric module, Cisco MDS9710 Ghana Crossbar Switching Fabric-3 Module. With the new fabric switching modules, the switch can be upgraded to support 64-Gbps line-rate ports. MDS 9710 Crossbar Switching Fabric-3 Module supports double the bandwidth of Fabric-1 and thus only half the number is needed to support currently shipping 32-Gbps line cards.

Intelligent network services

 Migrate your SAN islands to enterprise-wide storage networks with VSAN technology, Access Control Lists (ACLs) for hardware-based intelligent frame processing, and fabric-wide Quality of Service (QoS).

• Integrated hardware-based VSANs and Inter-VSAN Routing (IVR) : Integration of VSANs into port-level hardware allows any port in a system or fabric to be partitioned to any VSAN. Deliver line-rate routing between any ports in a system or fabric without the need for external routing appliances.
• Intelligent storage services : Interoperability with intelligent service capabilities on other Cisco MDS 9000 Family platforms and the intelligent services switch provide services such as acceleration of storage applications for data replication, backup, and data migration to hosts and targets.
• Smart Zoning : Efficiently provision hardware access control entries specified by the zone set. Match smart zones to applications, application clusters, hypervisor clusters, or other data center entities. Avoid superfluous entries that allow servers (initiators) to talk to other servers or storage devices (targets) to talk to other storage devices. You’ll gain larger zones with multiple initiators and targets without consuming excessive hardware resources. Automate zoning tasks and avoid creating many small zones.

Virtual machine transparency

 Deterministic hardware performance and a comprehensive feature set allow virtual machines to have the same SAN attributes as a physical server. On a per-virtual machine basis, the Cisco NX-OS Software offers VSANs, QoS policies, access control, performance monitoring, and data protection to promote the scalability and mobility of virtual machines. Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) provides end-to-end visibility all the way from the virtual machine down to the storage resource, with resource allocation, performance measurements, and predictions available on a per-virtual machine basis to enable rapid troubleshooting in mission-critical virtualized environments.

Comprehensive security

 In addition to support for services such as VSANs, hardware-enforced zoning, ACLs, per-VSAN Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), and Cisco TrustSec® Fiber Channel link encryption, Cisco MDS9710 Ghana Multilayer Directors support a comprehensive security framework consisting of RADIUS and TACACS+, Fiber Channel Security Protocol (FC-SP), Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol, and Simple Network Management Protocol Version 3 (SNMPv3). Cisco TrustSec Fiber Channel link-encryption delivers transparent, hardware-based 16-Gbps or 32-Gbps line-rate encryption of Fiber Channel data in addition to 10-Gbps line-rate encryption.

Unified SAN management

The Cisco MDS9710 Ghana includes built-in storage network management with all features available through a Command-Line Interface (CLI) or Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM), a centralized management tool that simplifies management of unified fabrics. DCNM supports integration with third-party storage management applications to allow transparent interaction with existing management tools. DCNM supports federation of up to 10 DCNM servers to manage up to 150,000 devices using a single management pane.

Sophisticated diagnostics

Intelligent diagnostics, protocol decoding, network analysis tools, and the Cisco Call Home capability give you reliability, faster problem resolution, and reduced service costs. Starting with Cisco MDS 9000 NX-OS Release 6.2, the Cisco Generic Online Diagnostics (GOLD) framework replaces the Cisco Online Health Management System (OHMS) diagnostic framework on the new MDS 9700 Series chassis. GOLD is a suite of diagnostic tools that you can use to verify that hardware and internal data paths are operating properly. It offers boot-time diagnostics, continuous monitoring, standby fabric loopback tests, and on-demand and scheduled tests. Enable the rapid fault isolation and system monitoring that are critical in today’s continuously operating environments.

Multiprotocol architecture

 A multilayer architecture enables a consistent feature set over a protocol-independent switch fabric. The Cisco MDS9710 Ghana transparently integrates Fiber Channel, FCoE, and FICON.

• 2/4/8-Gbps, 4/8/16-Gbps, 8/16/32-Gbps, 10-Gbps Fiber Channel, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet : The MDS 9710 supports 2/4/8/16-Gbps and 10-Gbps ports on the Cisco MDS 9700 48-Port 16-Gbps Fiber Channel Switching Module for both open-systems and FICON environments. The MDS 9710 also supports 10 Gigabit Ethernet clocked optics carrying Fiber Channel traffic. The MDS 9710 supports 4/8/16/32-Gbps on the Cisco MDS 9700 48-Port 32-Gbps Fiber Channel Switching Module.
• FICON : The MDS 9710 is mainframe ready and supports for IBM System z FICON and Linux environments.
• Multihop FCoE : Extend connectivity from FCoE and Fiber Channel fabrics to FCoE and Fiber Channel storage devices.
• SAN Extension FCIP support : The Cisco MDS 9000 24/10-Port SAN Extension Module is supported on MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors. With 24 line-rate 2/4/8/10/16-Gbps Fiber Channel ports and eight 1- and 10-Gigabit Ethernet FCIP ports, this module enables deployment of large and scalable SAN extension solutions.

Specifications