Cisco announced Cisco MDS 9132T, a 32Gbps storage fabric switch, targeting enterprise customers who want to shift to cost-effective 32Gbps solutions.
Cisco MDS 9132T switch is featuring telemetry for flash memory, telemetry sensors for streaming on Cisco MDS 9700 32G module, integration with Virtual Instruments for Fibre Channel (FC) SAN performance monitoring, and storage networking support for Cisco Nexus 9300-FX data center switch.
Cisco’s technology innovations for storage networking will help CIOs and IT heads of its customers to better analyze performance of SAN operation and move to cost-effective 32Gbps solutions especially when they opt for digital investments.
The strategy of Cisco is to provide cost effective storage networking telemetry and better options for performance, preserving customer technology investments.
“The MDS 9132T is a cost optimized, low power entry-level SAN switch with all the bells and whistles of an enterprise class switch, and has helped us achieve lower OPEX while providing enhanced workload visibility from the fabric itself,” said Alessandro Spigaroli, head of Open Systems, Architecture & Innovation, Cedacri Group.
The Cisco MDS 9132T 32 Port 32-Gbps Fibre Channel Switch enables customers to scale from 8 to 32 ports as demand grows without making significant investment. Its semi-modular design caters to entry-level, departmental and enterprise-class SANs, and enables customers to grow from 8 to 16 ports initially on the base. Cisco said customers can expand to 32 ports using the 16-port expansion module.
It supports flash memory environments (flash arrays for FCP workloads now and FC-NVMe in the near future), offering built-in telemetry diagnostics to proactively identify and correct conditions that affect all-flash array performance.
The product offers director-level capabilities in a small, cost effective and expandable footprint: 32 auto-sensing line-rate 32-Gbps Fibre Channel ports in a compact 1-rack-unit (1RU) form factor; the industry’s largest B2B credits per port (8270) to enable long distance 32G FC connectivity; and optimal resiliency, with field-swappable port expansion modules.
Cisco SAN Telemetry Streaming provides telemetry and diagnostics data, crucial to troubleshooting and providing deep insight into SAN fabrics. The Cisco MDS 9700 32G Module offers built-in sensors to provide pervasive data plane visibility for troubleshooting, infrastructure capacity planning, and optimization of SAN fabrics.
Enterprise customers can place the 32GB line card with built-in telemetry anywhere in the I/O path for seamless integration and ease of operation, and streamed data can be sent to any analytics application.
Cisco offers direct technology integration with Virtual Instruments (VI), ideal for customers in high performance industries such as finance, enterprises or large scale service providers.
VI’s VirtualWisdom application monitors and analyzes the performance and utilization of FC SAN infrastructure. Cisco FC SAN customers can select to deploy VirtualWisdom non-intrusively, eliminating the need for physical TAP and hardware probes.
“Both Cisco and Virtual Instruments play important roles in the performance, reliability and scalability of the Plex Manufacturing Cloud,” said Joe Hollewa, senior manager of Cloud Operations at PLEX.
Data will be streamed real-time from the Cisco MDS 9700 32G Module to the VirtualWisdom Platform Appliance, uniting Virtual Instruments analytics capabilities with Cisco’s leading SAN infrastructure.
Cisco Nexus 9300-FX platforms offer support for 16G Fibre Channel NPV now and 32G FC in the future. Cisco Nexus customers can choose to consolidate their LAN and SAN infrastructure at the data center access layer by providing an easy migration path from the earlier generation of Cisco Nexus 5000, Cisco Nexus 5600, and Cisco Nexus 6000 to the latest generation of Cisco Nexus 9300-FX switches.
