Cisco Systems MDS 9100 Series manual Ports on the Cisco MDS 9124 Switch, Cisco MDS 9124 Ports

Chapter 1 Product Overview

Cisco MDS 9100 Series Ports

Ports on the Cisco MDS 9124 Switch

The Cisco MDS 9124 Switch has 24 1-, 2-, and 4-Gbps autosensing and autonegotiating Fibre Channel ports with on-demand port activation licensing.

The on-demand ports are licensed in groups of eight. By default, an on-demand license for the first eight ports (ports 1 through 8) is included with the switch. You can transfer that license to other ports on the switch or obtain extra licenses to make more ports on the switch available. You can activate additional ports in 8-port increments with each on-demand port license. To purchase additional on-demand port licenses, contact your customer service representative and refer to Part Number M9124PL8-4G=.

For more information about on-demand port licensing, see the Cisco MDS 9000 Family CLI Configuration Guide and the Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fabric Manager Configuration Guide. See Figure 1-7.

Figure 1-7 Cisco MDS 9124 Ports

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1	Console port	3	8 default licensed ports
2	10/100 Ethernet management port	4	16 on-demand ports

Ports on the Cisco MDS 9140 Switch and the Cisco MDS 9120 Switch

On the Cisco MDS 9140 Switch and the Cisco MDS 9120 Switch, bandwidth optimized ports are on the left side of the front panel, surrounded by a white border. These ports are best used for applications requiring very high bandwidth: for example, ISL connections between switches and high-performance host or target controllers. These ports support a sustained data rate of up to 2 Gbps in each direction, on all ports simultaneously.

Host optimized ports are best for all but the most bandwidth intensive connections and are typically used to connect host devices (servers) to the SAN. These ports are organized into four port groups.

The four ports within a port group share access to a single internal channel resulting in a subscription ratio of approximately 3.2:1.

Tip For full 2-Gbps bandwidth between two devices using host optimized ports, connect one device to the first port group and connect the second device to the second port group.

Cisco MDS 9100 Series Hardware Installation Guide

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