Cisco Metro FAQ
Metro FAQ [doc] 81KB
Q: What is being announced?
A: The announcement addresses the completion of joint interoperability
testing of the Cisco ONS 15540 in IBM's Geographically Dispersed Parallel
Sysplex ™(GDPS™) environments up to 40 km without amplifiers. Testing
was completed in November 2001.
Q: How is IBM involved in this announcement?
A: IBM Enterprise Server Group has been working with Cisco engineering
to establish mainframe channel requirements and technical guidance to
properly design ESCON®, FICON™,Sysplex Timer (ETR/CLO) and ISC interfaces
for the Cisco ONS 15540. IBM has also provided test equipment and assistance
through the testing process. The final integration testing was completed
on IBM premises in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Q: What is GDPS?
A: IBM's Parallel Sysplex® technology, hardware, and automation software
provides customers with a high-availability solution where multiple mainframe
processors are tightly coupled, thus providing seamless fail-over at the
application level. Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex extends the
Parallel Sysplex technology over "dark fiber" up to 40 km, adding distance
separation to further enhance customer demand for no down time.
Q: What are Cisco and IBM planning to do together in metro area optical
networking?
A: Cisco is working with IBM Global Services to jointly sell business
continuity solutions based the Cisco ONS 15540 and IBM GDPS. We are working
with IBM Global Services to deliver optical services for both enterprise
and service provider customers that use the Cisco ONS 15540 as the basis
of a metro area network.
Q: What is the Cisco ONS 15540?
A: The Cisco ONS 15540 is a new generation cost-effective, scalable Metropolitan
Area Network Extended Services Platform that uses Dense Wavelength Division
Multiplexing (DWDM) technology. Up to 32 lambdas (wavelengths of light)
are provided, which support different protocols and bit-rates independently.
Each lambda can operate at speeds from 16 Mb to 2.5 Gb.
Q: Who will benefit from the Cisco ONS 15540?
A: Large enterprise and service provider businesses that own or lease
"dark fiber" in metropolitan or distributed campus computing environments
requiring ultra-high reliability, large bandwidth, or storage area networking/connectivity
between premises. It also helps customers increase enterprise backbone
bandwidth without protocol dependence such as in ESCON, Fiber Channel,
and Gigabit Ethernet applications. Service providers will also find the
Cisco ONS 15540 to be a very attractive and scalable platform when deploying
Gigabit Ethernet, Storage, and SONET services in the Metro access and
Inter-Office network.
Q: How will customers benefit from IBM and Cisco's proposed collaboration
in the area of metro optical and GDPS?
A: Customers should expect to be able to protect their large investment
in a multidata center installation with this quality end-to-end solution
that will have been fully tested. Port densities and price points of the
Cisco ONS 15540 should enhance the total cost of ownership of the overall
project.
Q: What are the benefits of the Cisco ONS 15540?
A: The Cisco ONS 15540 supports protocol- and bit-rate-independent traffic,
which means customers can natively transport any optical digital protocol
including: OC3/OC12/OC48 SONET/SDH or ATM, FDDI, Fast Mbps Ethernet, Gigabit
Ethernet, 10 Gb Ethernet LAN PHY, ESCON, FICON, Coupling Link, Sysplex
Timer®, 1 Gb Fiber Channel and 2 Gb Fiber Channel.
The Cisco ONS 15540 transponder type 1 modules support 1310nm Multimode
(MM) or 1310nm Single-Mode (SM) or fiber inputs/outputs from/to customer
premises equipment (CPE). The Cisco ONS 15540 chassis has a small footprint
of 14 rack units supporting all 32 lambdas and operates on 110/240-Volt
AC or 48-Volt DC power.
Q: Are the Cisco and IBM products expected to complement each other
to form a total solution?
A: IBM and Cisco, by working together, expect to leverage the core competencies
of each to provide the customer a quality, end-to-end solution, from application
server to network to application server.
Q: Are the Cisco ONS 15540 and GDPS interoperable?
A: GDPS consists of multiple protocols running over ESCON and FICON physical
links. Ensuring that all of these protocols function flawlessly and can
be effectively managed is the focus of the planned joint effort between
IBM and Cisco.
Q: What IBM GDPS products were tested with the Cisco ONS 15540?
A: Sysplex Timer (ETR), Inter System Coupling (ISC)(1 and 2 Gigabit versions),
ESCON, FICON, and Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC) were the main components
tested.
Q: What tools are expected to be available to manage these products?
A: The Cisco ONS15540 supports SNMP-compliant network management systems.
Communication, management, and provisioning between nodes is supported
by an optional supervisory channel (OSC). Connection to the 10/100 Ethernet
port or Serial console port on any node allows for the full management
of all nodes in a ring or between nodes in point-to-point topologies.
The Cisco ONS 15540 is fully integrated into CiscoView, and the MIB is
available from Cisco Connection Online.
Q: What capabilities does the OSC Offer?
A: Cisco ONS 15540 is designed to offer several levels of optical supervisory
channel support; at the fiber level and the per lambda level. These OSCs
will offer customers the ability to ensure fast (less than 50 ms) protection
switching, an embedded communications link between each node in the optical
topology at both the fiber and the lambda level and sophisticated Operation,
Administration, and Maintenance capabilities that offer per service performance
monitoring.
Q: What application types are expected to take advantage of the Cisco
ONS 15540 and GDPS?
A: Provisioning of storage, data and SONET-based services. Interconnection
of distributed storage environments including IBM mainframe systems with
Sysplex Timer, ESCON, and FICON in GDPS; EMC environments including SRDF;
and managed wavelength service provisioning for any and all digital services
between 16 Mb/s and 2.5 Gb/s on a protocol independent and bit rate independent
basis. Disaster recovery and applications where aggregation of multiple
data, storage and SONET based services is required between two or more
locations. Communication services utilizing SONET/SDH/POS and Ethernet/Gigabit
Ethernet protocols.
Q: Will customers be able to buy planning, implementation, and design
services for these solutions?
A: IBM Global Services is the market leader in delivering Network Consulting
and Integration Services. (Source: IDC, 2001) With their worldwide coverage,
IBM Global Services will meet the needs of the customer for their networking
services, starting from planning to design, implementation, and management.
Specifically, IBM Global Services offers a complete suite of optical networking
services with the Cisco ONS 15540 to support GDPS, storage, and other
high-bandwidth connectivity applications.
For more information, please visit:
http://www-1.ibm.com/services/nc/download/gss1860f.pdf
Q: How do I contact a local IBM Global Services Consultant trained
on these solutions?
A: Contact an IBM Global Services Consultant at one of the following numbers:
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/756/partnership/ibm/global_services_contacts.html
Q: Where can I find more information?
A: . http://cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/olpl/metro/on15500/on15540/
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/library/whitepapers/gf225114.html
http://www-1.ibm.com/services/nc/download/gss1860f.pdf
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/756/partnership/ibm/metro.html
http://partners.cisco.com/ibm/solutions/technology/metro/index.shtml
Q: Is there an e-mail alias where I can send further questions?
A: Yes. Send email inquiries to ask-ONS15540@cisco.com.
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