Cisco launches new Fibre Channel products, aimed at improving performance of storage area networks

Cisco launched new Fibre Channel (FC) products last week to help companies improve the performance of storage area networks (SANs).

Cisco announced a new MDS 9513 13-slot Director chassis for large datacentres; three 4Gbit/s switch modules and a new four-port 10Gbit/s switch module for its MDS 9000 series products. Cisco also upgraded its SAN-OS software to version 3.0.

Cisco consulting systems architect Ian Bond said, “For disaster recovery between datacentres [with a distance of 200m] 10Gbit/s FC links are ideal. The links are good for copying data between campus datacentres. And if you run this over a DWDM [dense wavelength division multiplexing] capability you can go out to 200km."

Cisco said that the new 4Gbit/s switch modules will allow the MDS 9513 a maximum of 528 FC ports with 1Gbit/s, 2Gbit/s or 4Gbit/s speeds. Lower-spec MDS models, the 9509 and 9506, will be able to scale to 336 and 192 ports respectively, and the 4Gbit/s and 10Gbit/s switch modules are compatible with MDS 9500 and 9200 series systems.

The MDS 9513 has duplicates of all critical hardware components and its OS software supports stateful process restart.

New features in SAN-OS 3.0 include support for the new hardware and for more than 256 ports. “For security there's also support for IPv6, and inter-switch authentication,” commented Bond. “There's also increased support for IBM mainframes through support for Ficon connections."

The Cisco MDS 9513 Multilayer Director, 4Gbit/s and 10Gbit/s switch modules are scheduled to ship in May.