Cisco MDS 9706 Multilayer Director

Scalability and Convergence in a Compact Form

The Cisco MDS 9706 Multilayer Director brings superior performance, scalability, multiprotocol convergence, integrated analytics, and enterprise-grade availability to data center SANs in a compact form factor. It is an ideal candidate for deployment in small to medium-sized data center storage environments as well as pod-based converged solutions for the cloud.

Features and Capabilities

• Lower TCO with SAN consolidation
• Scalable expansion with outstanding investment protection
• Enterprise-class availability
• Multiprotocol architecture with multihop 10/40-Gbps Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP)
• Business transformation with enterprise cloud deployment
• Deep visibility with integrated analytics

Get High Performance and Scalability

The Cisco MDS 9706 switch is designed to meet the performance and scalability needs of the most demanding SANs today and well into the future, while also lowering TCO. It offers:

• Up to 12-Tbps front-panel Fibre Channel switching capacity
• 1.5-Tbps front-panel Fibre Channel performance per slot
• Industry-leading port densities of up to 192 32/16/10/8/4/2-Gbps autosensing line-rate Fibre Channel, or 384 10-Gbps FcoE, or 192 40-Gbps FcoE ports per chassis
• Up to 32 10-Gbps FCIP ports and 8 40-Gbps FCIP ports on MDS 9706
• Integrated analytics on 32G module

Reduce Total Cost of Ownership and Protect Investments

The Cisco MDS 9706 switch is optimized for the data center and delivers a lower TCO. It features:

• Compact 9-rack-unit form factor to make optimal use of valuable data center floor space
• Reduced system power consumption
• True front-to-back air flow for hot-cold aisle deployments

The Cisco MDS 9706 supports the same Fibre Channel and FCoE switching modules as supported by the Cisco MDS 9710 and allows for a high degree of system commonality. Designed to grow with your storage environment, the Cisco MDS 9706 provides smooth migration, common sparing, and outstanding investment protection.

Gain Enterprise-Class Availability

The Cisco MDS 9706 offers enterprise-grade availability. It provides:

• Industry's first redundancy on all major hardware components
• Nondisruptive software upgrades, automatic process restarts, and stateful supervisor failover

Specifications at a Glance

Minimum Software Requirements

• Cisco MDS 9000 NX-OS Software Release 6.2(9) or later

Port Types

• 48-port Fibre Channel module supporting 4/8/16/32-Gbps autosensing (optionally configurable) Fibre Channel ports
• 48-port Fibre Channel module supporting 2/4/8/16-Gbps autosensing (optionally configurable) and 10-Gbps fixed-rate Fibre Channel ports
• 48-port FCoE module with 10-Gbps FCoE ports
• 24-port FCoE module with 40-Gbps FCoE ports
• 24/10 SAN extension module with 24 ports at 2/4/8/10/16 Gigabit Ethernet Fibre Channel, 8 ports at 1/10 GE, and 2 ports at 40 GE for FCIP
• NVMe over Fibre Channel support on all Ports

Advanced Functionality

• Virtual storage area network (VSAN )
• Inter-VSAN Routing (IVR)
• PortChannel with multipath load balancing
• Flow- and zone-based quality of service (QoS)
• N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV)
• Integrated Analytics