Cisco ‘raises the bar for Storage Networking

Demand from enterprises for data storage systems is growing rapidly. IDC estimates (March 2012) that data storage needs will grow at an annual compound growth rate of 61.4 percent through 2015. As storage systems grow, so too does the need to better integrate these systems with other critical data center infrastructure such as networking and computing systems. Cisco calls its strategy for delivering this close integration the Unified Data Centre.

Cisco's storage switching offerings are critical components of the industry's most advanced and broadest end-to-end data center networking portfolio — a portfolio spanning storage directors, switches, servers, central management and the company's common operating system, NX-OS. Together, this portfolio helps a wide range of industries, from companies needing faster access to business metrics for better decision making, to medical caregivers accessing information on-demand in examination, treatment, surgical, and patient rooms.

New Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director
The Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director establishes a new benchmark for performance — delivering 24 terabits per second of total switching capacity, almost three times the bandwidth of any director in the industry.
• Supports both high-density Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet, enabling consistent SAN and LAN networking operations.
• Provides storage connectivity for mission-critical applications, massive amounts of data, solid state drives (SSD) and cloud-based environments without impacting current IT operations.
• Designed for growth without rip-and-replace upgrades, with 24 Tbps of total switching capacity for Fibre Channel that can support growth of any organization beyond what it needs today.
• The Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director builds on the MDS heritage of nonstop operations, including software upgrades, by providing the highest fault-tolerant capabilities with fully redundant (N+1) fans, switching fabrics, and power-supplies or grid redundancy (N:N).
• Enabling scalability for any SAN with the new 48-port 16 GB Fibre Channel and 48-port 10 GB FCoE line cards, the Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director supports up to 384 line-rate 16 GB Fibre Channel ports or FCoE in a single 14 RU chassis.
• Operational consistency is provided across the data center, enabling customers to use staff knowledge and existing processes to minimize change management when migrating to new platforms.

New Cisco MDS 9250i Multiservice Fabric Switch
The Cisco MDS 9250i Multiservice Fabric Switch delivers storage services, including Cisco I/O accelerator and Data Mobility Manager, which improve SAN efficiency by performing important storage services centrally in the fabric. This architecture reduces the time and resources required to perform common storage management functions and simplifies and accelerates data protection for regulatory compliance.
• Offers up to 40 line-rate ports of 16GB FC/FICON, 8 ports of 10 GE FCoE, and 2 ports of 1/10GE FCIP/iSCSI, while delivering a rich set of storage services via licensing.
• SAN Extension simplifies data protection and business continuance strategies by enabling backup, remote replication, and other disaster-recovery services over WAN distances using open-standards FCIP tunneling.
• Cisco I/O Accelerator (IOA) provides acceleration for MAN/WAN applications, and wire encryption for backup and replication operations, making disaster recovery and regulatory compliance much easier.
• The Cisco Data Mobility Manager provides the ability to migrate data easily from LUN to LUN or array to array, quickly and without disruption of access to the data.