Product Overview

The Cisco^® MDS 9148S 16G Multilayer Fabric Switch (Figure 1) is the next generation of the highly reliable, flexible, and low-cost Cisco MDS 9100 Series switches. It combines high performance with exceptional flexibility and cost effectiveness. This powerful, compact one rack-unit (1RU) switch scales from 12 to 48 line-rate 16 Gbps Fibre Channel ports.

The Cisco MDS 9148S is excellent for:

●   A standalone SAN in small departmental storage environments

●   A top-of-the-rack switch in medium-sized redundant fabrics

●   An edge switch in enterprise data center core-edge topologies

The Cisco MDS 9148S is powered by Cisco NX-OS and Cisco Prime^™ Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) software. It delivers advanced storage networking features and functions with ease of management and compatibility with the entire Cisco MDS 9000 Family portfolio for reliable end-to-end connectivity.

High Performance and Flexibility at Low Cost

Up to 48 autosensing Fibre Channel ports are capable of speeds of 2, 4, 8, and 16 Gbps, with 16 Gbps of dedicated bandwidth for each port. The base switch model comes with 12 ports enabled, and can be upgraded as needed with the 12-port Cisco MDS 9148S On-Demand Port Activation license to support configurations of 24, 36, or 48 enabled ports. Only the Cisco MDS 9148S scales from 12 to 48 high-performance Fibre Channel ports in a single 1RU form factor.

High-Availability Platform for Mission-Critical Deployments

In environments in which downtime is intolerable, the Cisco MDS 9148S offers In-Service Software Upgrades (ISSU). This means that Cisco NX-OS Software can be upgraded while the Fibre Channel ports carry traffic. The Cisco MDS 9148S includes dual redundant hot-swappable power supplies and fan trays, PortChannels for Inter-Switch Link (ISL) resiliency, and F-port channeling for resiliency on uplinks from a Cisco MDS 9148S operating in NPV mode. New hardware based slow port detection and recovery provide enhanced performance and monitoring capability.

Simplified Storage Management with Sophisticated Diagnostics

The Cisco MDS 9148S offers built-in storage network management and SAN plug-and-play capabilities. All features are available through a command-line interface (CLI) or Cisco Prime DCNM for SAN Essentials Edition, a centralized management tool. Cisco DCNM task-based wizards simplify management of single or multiple switches and fabrics. For virtual infrastructure, it manages the entire path: from the virtual machine and switch to the physical storage. The Cisco MDS 9148S also supports PowerOn Auto Provisioning (POAP) to automate software image upgrades and configuration file installation on newly deployed switches. Additionally, it provides intelligent diagnostics, protocol decoding, network analysis tools, and Cisco Call Home for added reliability, faster problem resolution, and reduced service costs.

Intelligent Network Services and Advanced Traffic Management

The Cisco MDS 9148S uses virtual SAN (VSAN) technology for hardware-enforced, isolated environments within a physical fabric. It offers access control lists (ACLs) for hardware-based, intelligent frame processing. Advanced traffic management features, such as fabricwide quality of service (QoS) and Inter-VSAN Routing (IVR), are included in the optional Cisco MDS 9000 Family Enterprise Package. QoS prioritizes application data traffic for better and more predictable network service. Zone-based QoS simplifies configuration and administration by using the familiar zoning concept. IVR facilitates resource sharing across VSANs without compromising scalability, reliability, availability, and network security.

Comprehensive Network Security Framework

An extensive set of innovative and powerful security features and functions is available with the optional Cisco MDS 9000 Family Enterprise Package. It offers fabricwide, per-VSAN role-based authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) services using RADIUS, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), Microsoft Active Directory (AD), and TACACS+. It also deploys VSAN fabric isolation, intelligent, port-level packet inspection, Fibre Channel Security Protocol (FC-SP) host-to-switch and switch-to-switch authentication, Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), Secure Shell Version 2 (SSHv2), and Simple Network Management Protocol Version 3 (SNMPv3) implementing Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Other security features include control-plane security, hardware-enforced zoning, broadcast zones, and management access.

Table 1 summarizes the main features and benefits of the Cisco MDS 9148S.

Table 1.       Features and Benefits