Cisco Systems MDS 9500 Series Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Switch for IBM Blade Center, Power Supplies

Chapter 1 Product Overview

Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Switch for IBM Blade Center

Se n d d o c u m e n t a t i o n c o m m e n t s t o m d s f e e d b a ck - d o c @ c i s c o . c o m .

Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Switch for IBM Blade Center

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 NX-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.

Power Supplies

The Cisco MDS 9500 Series supports dual hot-swappable power supplies, each of which is capable of supplying sufficient power to the entire chassis should one power supply fail. The power supplies monitor their output voltage and provide status to the supervisor modules. To prevent the unexpected shutdown of an optional module, the power management software only allows a module to power up if adequate power is available.

The power supplies can be configured to be redundant or combined. By default, they are configured as redundant, so that if one fails, the remaining power supply can still power the entire system. For information about how to configure the power supplies, see the Cisco MDS 9000 CLI Family Configuration Guide.

Cisco MDS 9500 Series Hardware Installation Guide

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