Looking for advanced functionality for your datacenter storage environment? The Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Director delivers uncompromising high availability, security, scalability, ease of management, and transparent integration. Plus, it’s backward compatible, protecting your investment.
Meeting the demands of large datacenter storage environments
The Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Director was designed from the start for high availability. Beyond meeting the basic requirements of nondisruptive software upgrades and redundancy of all critical hardware components, the Cisco MDS 9509 software architecture offers an unparalleled level of availability. The Cisco MDS 9500 Series supervisor module has the unique ability to automatically restart failed processes, making it exceptionally robust. In the rare event that a supervisor module is reset, complete synchronization between the active and standby supervisor modules ensures stateful failover with no disruption to traffic.
Inter-Switch Links enable high availability
High availability is implemented at the fabric level using robust and high-performance Inter-Switch Links (ISLs). PortChannel capability allows users to aggregate up to 16 physical links into one logical bundle. The bundle can consist of any speed-matched ports in the chassis, ensures that the bundle remains active in the event of a port, application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), or module failure. The Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Director takes high availability to a new level, ensuring solutions that exceed the 99.999 percent uptime requirements of today's most demanding environments.
Scalable expansion with maximum investment protection
Using Cisco MDS 9000 Family switching modules, the Cisco MDS 9509 supports from 12 to 336 1/2/4 Gb/sec auto-sensing Fibre Channel ports, from 4 to 28 10-Gb/sec Fibre Channel ports, and from 8 to 48 1-Gb/sec Ethernet ports (user-configurable for iSCSI or FCIP) in a 9-slot modular chassis. The Cisco MDS 9509 provides up to 1008 Fibre Channel ports in a single rack. With 1.4 Tb/sec of internal bandwidth, the Cisco MDS 9509 easily supports 1/2/4-Gb/sec and 10-Gb/sec.
Protects your investment
The Cisco MDS 9509 provides the highest possible level of system commonality. All Cisco MDS 9000 Family switching modules are compatible with each Cisco MDS 9500 Series Multilayer Director. Designed to grow with your storage environment, the Cisco MDS 9509 provides smooth migration, common sparing, and outstanding investment protection.
High Performance
Highest Fibre Channel performance
The Cisco MDS 9509 delivers 1/2/4 Gb/sec and 10 Gb/sec Fibre Channel switching speeds with full bandwidth redundancy. Each crossbar integrated in the supervisor module offers full system bandwidth, ensuring that the loss or removal of a single supervisor module does not affect system performance. Plus, it ensures 100 percent system throughput even in the event of a crossbar failure.
SAN Consolidation
Virtual SANs enable more efficient utilization
Ideal for efficient, secure SAN consolidation, Virtual SANs (VSANs) allow 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 maintains its own fabric services for added scalability and resilience. VSANs allow the cost of SAN infrastructure to be shared among more users, while ensuring absolute segregation of traffic and retaining independent control of configuration on a VSAN-by-VSAN basis.
Integrated SAN Routing
In another step toward deploying efficient, cost-effective, consolidated storage networks, the Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Director supports IVR, the industry's first routing functionality 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. Integrated 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. Integrated IVR means lower total cost of SAN ownership.
Multiprotocol Intelligence
Transparently integrates multiple transport technologies
As with all Cisco MDS 9500 Series Multilayer Directors, the MDS 9509 architecture enables multilayer and multiprotocol functionality, allowing it to transparently integrate multiple transport technologies for maximum flexibility. Beginning with Fibre Channel, FICON, iSCSI, and FCIP, the Cisco MDS 9509 is a robust multiprotocol platform designed for deployment of cost-optimized storage networks. Users can implement up to 10-Gb/sec Fibre Channel or FICON for high-performance applications, iSCSI over Ethernet for cost-effective connectivity to shared storage pools, and FCIP for connectivity between datacenters.
Open Platform
Enables intelligent storage applications
The Cisco MDS 9509 multilayer director provides an open platform that delivers the intelligence and advanced features required to make multilayer intelligent SANs a reality, including hardware-enabled innovations to host or accelerate applications for data migration, data replication, serverless backup, network-hosted volume management and more. Hosting and/or accelerating these applications in the network can dramatically improve scalability, availability, security and manageability of the storage environment-resulting in increased utility and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
Integrated Mainframe Support
Supports IBM ZSeries FICON and Linux environments
The Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Director is mainframe-ready with full support for IBM zSeries FICON and Linux environments. Qualified by IBM for attachment to all FICON-enabled devices in an IBM zSeries operating environment, the Cisco MDS 9509 multilayer directors supports transport of the FICON protocol in both cascaded and non-cascaded fabrics, as well as an intermix of FICON and open systems Fibre Channel Protocol traffic on the same switch.
Increases SAN utilization
Virtual SANs simplify intermix of SAN resources between z/OS, mainframe Linux, and open systems environments, allowing for increased SAN utilization and simplified SAN management. VSAN-based intermix mode eliminates the uncertainty and instability often associated with zoning-based intermix techniques. VSANs also eliminate the possibility of a misconfiguration or component failure in one VSAN affecting 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 CLI, or IBM CUP-enabled management tools including SA/390 Resource Measurement Facility (RMF), or Dynamic Channel Path Management (DCM).
Unified SAN Management
Centralized tool simplifies management
To meet the needs of all users, the Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Director provides three principal modes of management: Cisco MDS 9000 Family CLI, Cisco Fabric Manager, and integration with third-party storage management tools.
The Cisco MDS 9509 presents the user with a consistent, logical CLI. Adhering to the syntax of the widely known Cisco IOS Software CLI, the Cisco MDS 9000 Family CLI is easy to learn and delivers broad management capabilities. This extremely efficient and direct interface provides optimal functionality to administrators in enterprise environments.
Cisco Fabric Manager
Cisco Fabric Manager is a responsive, easy-to-use Java application that simplifies management across multiple switches and fabrics. Cisco Fabric Manager helps administrators to perform vital tasks such as topology discovery, fabric configuration and verification, provisioning, monitoring, and fault resolution. All functions are available through a secure interface, which facilitates remote management from any location. Cisco Fabric Manager can be used independently or in conjunction with third-party management applications. Cisco provides an extensive API for integration with third-party and user-developed management tools.
Advanced Traffic Management
Simplifies deployment and optimization of large-scale fabrics
The advanced traffic management capabilities integrated into the Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Director 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 distance.
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, ensuring that the bundle can remain active even in the event of a module failure.
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 to prioritize critical traffic.
Fibre Channel Congestion Control (FCC): An end-to-end feedback-based congestion control mechanism that augments the Fibre Channel buffer-to-buffer credit mechanism to provide enhanced traffic management.
Port Bandwidth Reservation: Allows users to define dedicated bandwidth on a per port basis.
Comprehensive Diagnostics and Troubleshooting Tools
Proactive diagnostic tools enhance performance
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 9509 integrates highly advanced analysis and debug tools to ensure performance. Power-on self test (POST) and online diagnostics provide proactive health monitoring. The Cisco MDS 9509 provides the integrated hardware functionality required to implement diagnostic capabilities such as Fibre Channel Traceroute for detailing the exact path and timing of flows, and Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) and Remote Switched Port Analyzer (RSPAN) to intelligently capture network traffic. After traffic has been captured, it can then be analyzed with the Cisco Fabric Analyzer, an embedded Fibre Channel analyzer. Comprehensive port-based and flow-based statistics enable sophisticated performance analysis and service-level agreement (SLA) accounting. With the Cisco MDS 9509, you get deliver the most comprehensive toolset for troubleshooting and analyzing storage networks.
Robust Security
A comprehensive solution
The Cisco MDS 9509 offers an extensive security framework to protect highly sensitive data crossing enterprise networks. The Cisco MDS 9509 employs intelligent packet 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 ensure that logical unit numbers (LUNs) are accessible only by specific hosts (LUN zoning), to limit SCSI read command for a certain zone (read-only zoning), and to restrict broadcasts to only the selected zones (broadcast zones).
VSANs help achieve higher security
VSANs are used to achieve higher security and greater stability by providing complete isolation among devices that are connected to the same physical SAN. IVR enables controlled sharing of resources between VSANs. In addition, the Fibre Channel Security Protocol (FC-SP) provides switch-switch and host-switch Diffie-Hellman Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (DH-CHAP) authentication supporting RADIUS or TACACS+, to ensure that only authorized devices access protected storage networks.
