Chapter 1 Product Overview
Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter
Cisco MDS 9120 Switch
The Cisco MDS 9120 Switch has a total of 20 1/2-Gbps autosensing, optionally configurable ports. The first group of four ports on the left-hand side are the bandwidth-optimized ports. They are delineated by a white border. The remaining four groups of four ports each are the host optimized port groups. See Figure 1-4.
Figure 1-4 Cisco MDS 9120 Switch
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Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter
The Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter is designed for IBM BladeCenter environments. The Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch is based on the Cisco MDS 9000 Family SAN switching technology, which integrates the Cisco MDS 9000 Family of switches and directors into a blade-switch architecture. The advanced architecture of the Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter, along with 4-GB technology, provides outstanding performance between Bladeswitches and the rest of the Fibre Channel infrastructure.
The Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter provides 4-GB Fibre Channel performance to blade-server switching. It also provides network intelligence features such as virtual SANs (VSANs), quality of service (QoS), and N-port interface virtualization (NPIV). It also offers nondisruptive software upgrades and on-demand port activation and is the most complete embedded Fibre Channel switching available for the IBM BladeCenter, BladeCenter-T, and BladeCenter-H platforms.
The Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter provides up to 20 nonblocking 1-, 2-, and 4-GB Fibre Channel ports that are available in two configurations: 7 internal ports and 3 external ports, or 14 internal ports and 6 external ports. Each port provides line-rate performance up to 4-GB without any performance loss for integrated features such as VSANs, QoS, or Network Address Translation (NAT). The Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter supports up to 16 VSANs per blade switch.
Each external port on the Cisco MDS FC Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter also provides line-rate performance up to 4-GB for Inter-Switch Links (ISLs) or additional device connectivity such as storage or host bus adapters (HBAs).
The Cisco SAN-OS software provides role-based access control (RBAC) for management access of the Cisco Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter command-line interface (CLI) and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). For more information, see the Cisco 9000 Family Command Reference.
Cisco MDS 9100 Series Hardware Installation Guide
