Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors

A New Benchmark for Storage Networks

Cisco MDS 9700 Series Switches deliver superior performance—more than three times the bandwidth than any currently available SAN Director. They are ready to 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 with support for 16-Gbps Fibre Channel and 1.5-Tbps throughput per slot
• High availability with fully redundant components, including fabric cards, supervisors, and power supplies
• Industry-leading scalability with up to 384 line rate 2/4/8-Gbps, 2/4/8/10/16-Gbps, or 10-Gbps autosensing Fibre Channel ports
• Intelligent network features such as virtual SAN technology, ACLs, intelligent frame processing, and fabric-wide QoS

Specifications at a Glance

Chassis Configuration

Eight line card slots, two supervisor slots, six crossbar switching fabric slots, three fan trays, up to eight power supplies

Performance and Scalability

Up to 24-Tbps Fibre Channel switching bandwidth
Supported Fibre Channel port speeds:

• 2/4/8-Gbps autosensing, optionally configurable
• 4/8/16-Gbps autosensing, optionally configurable
• 10-Gbps Fibre Channel

Ports Per Chassis

Up to 384 2/4/8/10/16-Gbps Fibre Channel ports

Ports Per Rack

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

Additional Resources