Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors

A New Benchmark for Storage Networks

Gain more than three times the bandwidth than any currently available SAN director. MDS 9700 Series Switches deliver superior performance. They can adapt to accommodate future mission-critical applications, massive amounts of data, and cloud environments. A fault-tolerant design and multi-protocol flexibility support non-stop operations and freedom of choice.

Features and Capabilities

Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors address the stringent requirements of large, virtualized, data center storage environments. They provide uncompromised availability, scalability, flexibility, security, ease of management, and transparent integration of new technologies.

Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors offer:

• Outstanding SAN performance
• High availability with fully redundant components, including fabric cards, supervisors, and power supplies
• Industry-leading scalability
• Intelligent network features such as virtual SAN technology, ACLs, intelligent frame processing, and fabric-wide QoS
• Multiprotocol support includes Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP), and NVMe over Fabric

Specifications at a Glance

Chassis Configuration

• MDS 9718: 18-slot chassis with 16 line card slots and up to 16 power supplies
• MDS 9710: 10-slot chassis with eight line card slots and up to eight power supplies
• MDS 9706: 6-slot chassis with four line card slots and up to four power supplies
• All offer two supervisor slots, six crossbar switching fabric slots, and three fan trays

Performance and Scalability

• Up to 48-Tbps Fibre Channel switching bandwidth
• 2/4/8-Gbps, 4/8/16/32-Gbps, or 10-Gbps line-rate autosensing Fibre Channel (optionally configurable)
• 10/40-Gbps FCoE and 10/40-Gbps FCIP

Ports Per Chassis

Up to 768 2/4/8/10/16/32-Gbps Fibre Channel, or 10-Gbps FCoE ports, or 384 40-Gbps FCoE

Ports Per Rack

Up to 1152 2/4/8-Gbps, 4/8/16/32-Gbps, or 10-Gbps Fibre Channel, or 10-Gbps FCoE ports

Additional Resources