In 2002 Cisco introduced the Cisco MDS 9000 Family of multilayer switches, with many industry-first features and advanced capabilities that redefined the storage networking industry (Figure 1). Over the years, the Cisco MDS 9000 Family has maintained technology leadership by continuing to deliver exceptional innovation. Despite industry consolidation accelerated by Cisco's rapid pace of innovation, competitors are still followers, delivering some features 2 to 7 years later than Cisco. In most cases, even if a competing product claims feature parity, in reality it delivers only limited functions.
Figure 1. Cisco MDS 9000 Family of Multilayer Switches
| Feature |
Cisco |
Competition |
| Director supporting more than 200 ports |
2002 |
2005 |
| Virtual SANs (VSANs) and ANSI virtual fabrics |
2002 |
2009 |
| Secure management through Simple Network Management Protocol Version 3 (SNMPv3) |
2002 |
2004 |
| Quality of service (QoS) |
2002 |
2007 |
| Fibre Channel Congestion Control (FCC) |
2002 |
No |
| Network diagnostics: Ping and Traceroute |
2002 |
2006 |
| Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) |
2002 |
2007 |
| Fabric analyzer |
2002 |
No |
| Tiered connectivity for network design optimization |
2002 |
No |
| VSAN trunking |
2002 |
2009 |
| Centralized Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) services (RADIUS and TACACS) |
2002 |
2004 |
| Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) |
2002 |
2006 |
| 2003 |
|
| Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) for management port redundancy |
2003 |
No |
| Port rate limiting |
2003 |
2008 |
| Integrated SAN routing on every port |
2003 |
No |
| IBM Fiber Connection (FICON) and Open System intermix through VSAN |
2003 |
2009 |
| Fibre Channel ID (FCID) persistence |
2003 |
No |
| Integrated SAN extension: Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) |
2003 |
2006 |
| Integrated iSCSI |
2003 |
2007 |
| Fibre Channel LUN zoning and read-only zones |
2003 |
No |
| Integrated virtualization |
2003 |
2007 |
| Native switch interoperability modes |
2003 |
2007 |
| Fibre Channel Security Protocol (FCSP) for host-switch and switch-switch authentication |
2003 |
2006 |
| 2004 |
|
| Cisco Fabric Services |
2004 |
No |
| Fibre Channel Write Acceleration |
2004 |
2007 |
| Hardware-based IP Security (IPsec) encryption for FCIP and iSCSI |
2004 |
2007 |
| FCIP hardware compression |
2004 |
2006 |
| FCIP write acceleration |
2004 |
2006 |
| FCIP tape acceleration |
2004 |
2007 |
| Large pool of extended credits (more than 5800 per port) |
2004 |
No |
| SAN Extension Tuner |
2004 |
No |
| Dynamic Port VSAN Membership (DPVM) |
2004 |
No |
| Embedded Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) agent |
2004 |
2005 |
| Distributed device aliases |
2004 |
No |
| 2005 |
|
| Integrated Fibre Channel routing with FCID Network Address Translation (NAT) |
2005 |
No |
| Heterogeneous data protection via SANTap |
2005 |
2007 |
| 2006 |
|
| IPv6 support |
2006 |
2007 |
| Remote SPAN (RSPAN) |
2006 |
No |
| Intelligent port bandwidth management |
2006 |
No |
| 10-Gbps Fibre Channel |
2006 |
2007 |
| Director supporting more than 500 ports |
2006 |
No |
| Large-scale support for highly scalable iSCSI service |
2006 |
No |
| 4-Gbps Fibre Channel |
2006 |
2006 |
| Enhanced inter-data-center routing through Autonomous Fabric ID |
2006 |
No |
| 2007 |
|
| SAN device virtualization |
2007 |
No |
| Integrated Storage Media Encryption (SME): encryption of data at rest |
2007 |
2009 |
| Integrated Data Mobility Manager (DMM) |
2007 |
No |
| Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) |
2007 |
No |
| N-Port Virtualization (NPV) |
2007 |
2007 |
| 2008 |
|
| Secure Erase: Permanent data erase |
2008 |
No |
| Offline data restore tool |
2008 |
No |
| FlexAttach: simplified server mobility and replacement |
2008 |
No |
| 2009 |
|
| F-port trunking: trunking of multiple VSANs to servers |
2009 |
No |
| Fibre Channel Link Encryption: encryption of data in motion |
2009 |
No |
