Cisco MDS 9000 18/4-Port Multiservice Module

Interconnect SAN Islands

Integrated FCIP for remote SAN extension

Data distribution, data protection, and business continuance services are significant components of today's information-centered businesses. The capability to efficiently replicate critical data on a global scale helps ensure a higher level of data protection for valuable corporate information, and also increases utilization of backup resources and lowers total cost of storage ownership. The Cisco MDS 9000 Family 18/4-Port Multiservice Module uses the open-standard FCIP protocol to extend the distance of current Fibre Channel solutions, enabling interconnection of SAN islands over extended distances.

Advanced SAN extension features

The Cisco MDS 9000 18/4-Port Multiservice Module supports hardware-based FCIP compression to maximize the effective WAN bandwidth of SAN extension solutions.

IPsec encryption boosts security

The module also supports IPsec encryption for secure transmission of sensitive data over extended distances. Hardware enablement of IPsec helps ensure line-rate throughput. Together, hardware-based compression and hardware-based encryption provide a high-performance, highly secure SAN extension capability.

FCIP write and tape acceleration improve application performance

Additionally, the Cisco MDS 9000 18/4-Port Multiservice Module supports FCIP write acceleration, a feature that can significantly improve application performance when storage traffic is extended across long distances. FCIP write acceleration reduces the latency of command acknowledgements, optimizing WAN throughput. Similarly, the module supports FCIP tape acceleration, which significantly improves throughput over WAN links for remote tape backup and restore operations.

Cisco Storage Media Encryption (SME)

Cisco SME protects data at rest on heterogeneous tape drives and virtual tape libraries (VTLs) in a SAN environment using secure IEEE-standard AES algorithms. Cisco SME has become important because of recently enacted regulations requiring companies to store and protect data at rest for a specified number of years, and to publicly disclose security breeches.

Cisco SME enables data to be compressed, encrypted, and authenticated for centralized security management and data management and recovery. Cisco SME services employ clustering technology to create a highly available solution.

The cryptographic cluster formed enhances reliability and availability, enables automated load balancing and failover capabilities, and simplifies provisioning as a single SAN fabric service rather than as individual switches or modules.

The Cisco Key Management Center (KMC) provides integrated key management for Cisco SME, with support for single- and multiple-site deployments. Cisco KMC provides essential features such as key archival, secure export and import and translation for distribution, and key shredding.

More Efficient Network Utilization

VSANs for SAN consolidation

Ideal for efficient, secure SAN consolidation, ANSI T11-standard VSANs enable more efficient storage network utilization by creating hardware-based isolated environments with a single physical SAN fabric or switch. Each VSAN can be zoned as a typical SAN and maintained with its own fabric services for added scalability and resilience.

VSANs allow the cost of SAN infrastructure to be shared among more users, while helping ensure segregation of traffic and retaining independent control of configuration on a VSAN-by-VSAN basis.

Integrated SAN routing

In another step toward deployment of efficient, cost-effective, consolidated storage networks, the Cisco MDS 9000 18/4-Port Multiservice Module supports IVR, the industry's first routing function for Fibre Channel. IVR allows selective transfer of data between specific initiators and targets on different VSANs while maintaining isolation of control traffic within each VSAN.

With IVR, data can transit VSAN boundaries while maintaining control plane isolation, thereby maintaining fabric stability and availability. IVR eliminates the need for external routing appliances, greatly increasing routing scalability while delivering line-rate routing performance, simplifying management, and eliminating the challenges associated with maintaining separate systems. IVR means lower total cost of SAN ownership.

Advanced Traffic Management

Simplify deployment

Thanks to the advanced traffic management capabilities integrated into the Cisco MDS 9000 18/4-Port Multiservice Module, you can simplify deployment and optimization of large-scale fabrics.

• Virtual output queuing: Helps ensure line-rate performance on each port, independent of traffic pattern, by eliminating head-of-line blocking
• Up to 4095 buffer-to-buffer credits: Can be assigned to an individual port for optimal bandwidth utilization across long distances
• PortChannels: Allow users to aggregate up to 16 physical ISLs into a single logical bundle, providing optimized bandwidth utilization across all links. The bundle can consist of any speed-matched ports from any module in the chassis, helping ensure that the bundle can remain active even in the event of a module failure
• Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF)-based multipathing: Provides the intelligence to load balance across up to 16 equal-cost paths and, in the event of a switch failure, dynamically reroute traffic
• QoS: Can be used to manage bandwidth and control latency, and to prioritize critical traffic
• Fibre Channel congestion control: Provides end-to-end, feedback-based congestion control that augments the Fibre Channel buffer-to-buffer credit mechanism, enabling enhanced traffic management

Robust Network Security

Protects your sensitive data

Addressing the need for fail-proof security in storage networks, the Cisco MDS 9000 Family 18/4-Port Multiservice Module offers an extensive security framework to protect highly sensitive data moving in today's enterprise networks.

The module employs intelligent frame inspection at the port level, including the application of ACLs for hardware enforcement of zones, VSANs, and advanced port security features.

• Extended zoning capabilities are enabled to help ensure that logical unit numbers (LUNs) can be accessed by only specific hosts (LUN zoning), to limit SCSI read commands for a certain zone (read-only zoning), and to restrict broadcasts to only the selected zones (broadcast zones).
• VSANs are used to achieve higher security and greater stability by providing complete isolation among devices that are connected to the same physical SAN.
• FC-SP provides switch-switch and host-switch Diffie-Hellman Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (DH-CHAP) authentication supporting RADIUS and TACACS+, to help ensure that only authorized devices can access protected storage networks.

Superior Diagnostics and Troubleshooting

Proactive health monitoring

Managing large-scale storage networks requires proactive diagnostics, tools to verify connectivity and route latency, and mechanisms for capturing and analyzing traffic. The Cisco MDS 9000 family integrates the industry's most advanced analysis and diagnostic tools. Power-on self test (POST) and online diagnostics provide proactive health monitoring.

The Cisco MDS 900018/4-Port Multiservice Module implements diagnostic capabilities such as Fibre Channel Traceroute to detail the exact path and timing of flows and Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) to intelligently capture network traffic. After traffic has been captured, it can be analyzed with the Cisco Fabric Analyzer, an embedded Fibre Channel analyzer.

Comprehensive port-based and flow-based statistics facilitate sophisticated performance analysis and service-level agreement (SLA) accounting. With the Cisco MDS 9000 family, Cisco delivers a comprehensive toolset for troubleshooting and analysis of storage networks.

Integrated Mainframe Support

Mainframe-ready

The Cisco MDS 9000 Family 18/4-Port Multiservice Module is mainframe ready with full support for IBM zSeries FICON and Linux environments. Certified by IBM for attachment to all FICON-enabled devices in an IBM zSeries operating environment, the Cisco MDS 9000 18/4-Port Multiservice Module supports transport of the FICON protocol in both cascaded and noncascaded fabrics, as well as an intermix of FICON and open systems Fibre Channel Protocol traffic on the same switch.

VSANS simplify SAN management

Virtual SANs simplify intermixing of SAN resources among IBM z/OS, mainframe Linux, and open systems environments, enabling increased SAN utilization and simplified SAN management. VSAN-based intermix mode eliminates the uncertainty and instability often associated with zoning-based intermixing techniques. The use of VSANs also greatly reduces the probability that misconfiguration or component failure in one VSAN will affect operation in other VSANs.

VSAN-based management access control simplifies partitioning of SAN management responsibilities between mainframe and open systems environments, enhancing security. FICON VSANs can be managed using the integrated Cisco Fabric Manager, Cisco command-line interface (CLI), or IBM CUP-enabled management tools including SA/390 Resource Measurement Facility (RMF) and dynamic channel path management (DCM).