Cisco Next Gen 32Gb Fibre Channel NVMe SAN Updates

Cisco Next Gen 32Gb Fibre Channel and NVMe SAN Updates

Cisco announced today next generation MDS storage area networking (SAN) Fibre Channel (FC) switches with 32Gb, along with NVMe over FC support.

Cisco Fibre Channel (FC) Directors (Left) and Switches (Right)

Highlights of the Cisco announcement include:

• MDS 9700 48 port 32Gbps FC switching module
• High density 768 port 32Gbps FC directors
• NVMe over FC for attaching fast flash SSD devices (current MDS 9700, 9396S, 9250i and 9148S)
• Integrated analytics engine for management insight awareness
• Multiple concurrent protocols including NVMe, SCSI (e.g. SCSI_FCP aka FCP) and FCoE

Where to Learn More

The following are additional resources to learn more.

• Cisco Storage Networking landing page
• More on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
• If Answer is NVMe, what are questions?
• Despite being declared dead, Fibre Channel continues to evolve with FC-BB-6
• Is FCoE Struggling to Gain Traction, or on a normal adoption course?
• The NVMe place (www.thenvmeplace.com.) and The SSD Place (www.thessdplace.com)
• Server StorageIO CI and HCI micro site landing page www.storageio.com/converge

What this all means, wrap up and summary

Fibre Channel remains relevant for many environments and it makes sense that Cisco known for Ethernet along with IP networking enhance their offerings. By having 32Gb Fibre Channel, along with adding NVMe over Fabric provides existing (and new) Cisco customers to support their legacy (e.g. FC) and emerging (NVMe) workloads as well as devices. For those environments that still need some mix of Fibre Channel, as well as NVMe over fabric this is a good announcement. Keep an eye and ear open for which storage vendors jump on the NVMe over Fabric bandwagon now that Cisco as well as Brocade have made switch support announcements.

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Watch for the spring 2017 release of his new book “Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials” (CRC Press).

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