Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module Data Sheet

Product overview

The Cisco^® MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module delivers the latest advanced switching technology with proven Cisco NX-OS software to power a new generation of scalable and intelligent multilayer switching solutions for SANs.

Designed to integrate multiprotocol switching and routing, intelligent SAN services, and storage applications onto highly scalable SAN switching platforms, the Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module enables intelligent, resilient, scalable, and secure high-performance multilayer SAN switching solutions. The Cisco MDS 9000 family of storage networking solutions lowers the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for storage networking by combining robust and flexible hardware architecture, multiple layers of network and storage intelligence, and compatibility with all Cisco MDS 9000 family switching modules.

This powerful combination helps organizations build highly available, scalable storage networks with comprehensive security and unified management. The Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module is supported on the Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors. Figure 1 shows the Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module.

Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module

Main features and benefits

The Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module offers numerous benefits.

Industry-leading scalability

The Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module is designed to meet the requirements of the largest data center storage environments and combines industry-leading scalability and performance, intelligent SAN services, nondisruptive software upgrades, stateful process restart and failover, and fully redundant operation for a new standard in director-class SAN switching.

Integrated performance

The combination of the Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 module, Cisco MDS 9700 48-Port 32-Gbps Fibre Channel Switching Module, and Cisco Fabric Manager Release 3 crossbar switching modules enables up to 3 Tbps of Fibre Channel throughput between modules in each direction for each payload slot in the Cisco MDS 9700 Series director switches. This per-slot bandwidth is four times the bandwidth needed to support a 48-port 32-Gbps Fibre Channel module at full line rate. The Cisco MDS 9700 Series architecture, based on central arbitration and crossbar fabric, provides 64 Gbps line-rate, nonblocking, predictable performance across all traffic conditions for every port in the chassis.

High availability

The Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module and Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors were designed from the beginning for high availability. In addition to meeting the basic requirement of nondisruptive software upgrades, the Cisco MDS 9700 Series software architecture offers availability. The Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 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 helps ensure stateful failover with no disruption of traffic.

The Cisco MDS 9700 Series provides the industry’s first redundancy on all major hardware components, as detailed in Table 1.

Table 1.        Redundancy details for the Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module and Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors

The Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module also provides Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF)-based multipathing to help ensure high availability at the fabric level. With the intelligence to load balance across up to 16 equal-cost paths, the module can dynamically reroute traffic in the event of a switch failure. The Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module in combination with Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors provides exceptional high availability, helping ensure that solutions exceed the 99.999 percent uptime requirements of today’s most demanding environments.

Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

The Cisco MDS 9000 family provides advanced management tools for overall low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). It supports Cisco virtual SAN (VSAN) technology for hardware-enforced, isolated environments within a single physical fabric for secure sharing of physical infrastructure, further decreasing TCO.

Comprehensive security framework

The Cisco MDS 9000 family supports RADIUS and TACACS+, Fibre Channel Security Protocol (FC-SP)1, Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol, and Simple Network Management Protocol Version 3 (SNMPv3) implementing Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), VSANs, hardware-enforced zoning, Access Control Lists (ACLs), and per-VSAN Role-Based Access Control (RBAC).

Unified SAN management

The Cisco MDS 9000 family includes built-in storage network management, with all features available through a Command-Line Interface (CLI) or Cisco Prime^® Data Center Network Manager (DCNM), a centralized management tool that simplifies management of multiple switches and fabrics. Integration with third-party storage management platforms allows transparent interaction with existing management tools.

Intelligent network services

VSAN technology, ACLs for hardware-based intelligent frame processing, and fabricwide Quality of Service (QoS) enable migration from SAN islands to enterprise-wide storage networks.

●      Integrated hardware-based VSANs and Inter-VSAN Routing (IVR): Integration of VSANs into port-level hardware allows any port in a system or fabric to be partitioned to any VSAN. Integrated hardware-based IVR provides line-rate routing between any ports in a system or fabric without the need for external routing appliances.

●      Intelligent storage services: The Cisco MDS 9700 Series operates with intelligent service capabilities on other Cisco MDS 9000 family platforms to provide services such as acceleration of storage applications for data replication and backup and data migration to hosts and targets attached to the Cisco MDS 9700 Series.

●      Smart Zoning: When the Smart Zoning feature is enabled, Cisco MDS 9700 Series fabrics provision the hardware access control entries specified by the zone set more efficiently, avoiding the superfluous entries that would allow servers (initiators) to talk to other servers or allow storage devices (targets) to talk to other storage devices. This feature makes larger zones with multiple initiators and multiple targets feasible without excessive consumption of hardware resources. Thus, smart zones can correspond to applications, application clusters, hypervisor clusters, or other data center entities, saving the time that administrators previously spent creating many small zones and enabling the automation of zoning tasks.

Advanced diagnostics and troubleshooting tools

Management of 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 advanced, industry-leading analysis and debugging tools. The power-on self-test (POST) and online diagnostics provide proactive health monitoring. The Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module provides the integrated functions required to implement diagnostic capabilities such as Fibre Channel traceroute for identifying the exact path and timing of flows, and Cisco Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) and Remote SPAN (RSPAN) to intelligently capture network traffic. After traffic has been captured, it can then be analyzed with the Cisco Fabric Manager – Cisco SAN Analyzer.

The Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module also allows collection and management of comprehensive port-based and flow-based statistics, enabling sophisticated performance analysis and Service-Level Agreement (SLA) accounting. The integrated Cisco Smart Call Home capability provides additional reliability and enables faster problem resolution and reduced service costs.

The Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 enables the powerful Cisco Generic Online Diagnostics (GOLD) framework) diagnostic framework on the Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Director chassis. Cisco GOLD is a suite of diagnostic facilities to verify that hardware and internal data paths are operating as designed. Boot-time diagnostics, continuous monitoring, standby fabric loopback tests, and on-demand and scheduled tests are part of the Cisco GOLD feature set. This industry-leading diagnostics subsystem enables the rapid fault isolation and continuous system monitoring critical in today's continuously operating environments. With the Cisco MDS 9700 Series, Cisco delivers a comprehensive tool set for troubleshooting and analyzing an organization’s storage network.

Multiprotocol intelligence

The multilayer architecture of the Cisco MDS 9700 Series enables a consistent feature set over a protocol-independent switch fabric. The Cisco MDS 9700 Series transparently integrates Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and IBM Fibre Connection (FICON).

●      2/4/8-Gbps, 4/8/16-Gbps, 8/16/32-Gbps and 10-Gbps Fibre Channel and 10 Gigabit Ethernet: The Cisco MDS 9700 Series supports both 2/4/8/16/32-Gbps and 10-Gbps ports on the Cisco MDS 9700 48-Port 32-Gbps Fibre Channel Switching Module. The Cisco MDS 9700 Series also supports 10 Gigabit Ethernet clocked optics carrying 10-Gbps Fibre Channel traffic.

●      FICON: The Cisco MDS 9700 Series supports deployment in IBM System z FICON and Linux environments.

●      Multihop FCoE: The Cisco MDS 9700 Series supports multihop FCoE, extending connectivity from FCoE and Fibre Channel fabrics to FCoE and Fibre Channel storage devices.

●      USB ports: Two USB 3.0 ports are provided on the front panel for simplified configuration-file uploading and downloading using common USB memory stick products.

Product specifications

Table 2 lists the product specifications for the Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module.

Table 2.        Product specifications

Ordering information

Table 3 provides ordering information for the Cisco MDS 9700 Series Supervisor-4 Module.

Table 3.        Ordering information

Product sustainability

Information about Cisco’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives and performance is provided in Cisco’s CSR and sustainability reporting.

Table 4.        Product sustainability

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For more information

For more information about the Cisco MDS 9700 Series, visit https://www.cisco.com/go/storage or contact your local account representative.