S e n d d o c u m e n t a t i o n c o m m e n t s t o m d s f e e d b a c k - d o c @ c i s c o . c o m
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Cisco MDS 9100 Series Hardware Installation Guide
OL-21514-01
Chapter 1 Product Overview
Cisco MDS 8-Gb Fabric Switch for HP BladeSystem C-Class
The Cisco NX-OS software provides role-based access control (RBAC) for management access of the
Cisco Fibre Channel Blade Switch for IBM BladeCenter command-line interface (CLI) and Simple
Network Management Protocol (SNMP). For more information, see the Cisco MDS 9000 Family
Command Reference.
Cisco MDS 8-Gb Fabric Switch for HP BladeSystem C-Class
The Cisco MDS 8-Gb Fabric Switch is designed for the HP BladeSystem C-Class. The Cisco MDS 8-Gb
Fabric Switch is a 24-port switch, with 8-Gbps of dedicated bandwidth for each port. The Cisco MDS
8-Gb Fabric Switch offers intelligent storage networking capabilities such as virtual SANs (VSANs),
PortChannels, quality of service (QoS), high availability, and security. In addition, it supports key
features such as N port virtualization (NPV), N port interface virtualization (NPIV), FlexAttach, and F
port trunking.
The Cisco MDS 8-Gb Fabric Switch offers nondisruptive software upgrades, up to 16 VSANs per switch
for fault isolation, and PortChannels for Inter-Switch Link (ISL) resiliency. The PortChannels allow
users to aggregate up to 16 physical ISLs into a single logical bundle, providing optimized bandwidth
use across all links.
The Cisco MDS 8-Gb Fabric Switch has 8 1-, 2-, 4-, and 8-Gbps SFP ports at the front panel and has 16
2-, 4-, and 8-Gbps serdes connections to the backplane. The 16 ports are internal for server connections
and 8 ports are external or SAN facing. The Cisco MDS 8-Gb Fabric Switch ports are grouped. Each port
group consists of 4 ports.
The Cisco MDS 8-Gb Fabric Switch external ports include hot-swappable, Small Form-Factor Pluggable
(SFP) line card interfaces. All SFP interfaces are 1, 2, 4, and 8 Gbps, with autosensing capabilities.
Individual ports can be configured with either short- or long-wavelength SFP optics for connectivity of
up to 500 meters (m) and 10 kilometers (km), respectively.
The Cisco MDS 8-Gb Fabric Switch comes with the on-demand port activation license, which can be
expanded in 8-port increments.
The Cisco NX-OS software provides role-based access control (RBAC) for management access of the
Cisco MDS 8-Gb Fabric Switch command-line interface (CLI) and Cisco Fabric Manager, a centralized
management tool that simplifies management of a standalone switch or multiple switches and fabrics.
For more information about Cisco 9000 Family commands, see the Cisco MDS 9000 Family Command
Reference.
Power Supplies
The Cisco MDS 9100 Series supports dual AC and DC power supplies. Each power supply provides
sufficient power to maintain switch operation in the event of a single power supply failure. Power
supplies are hot swappable and can be individually replaced without disruption to the system. (See the
“Power Specifications” section on page B-3
.)
Note
The new DC power supply is not supported on the Cisco MDS 9148 Switch, Cisco MDS 9140 Switch,
and the Cisco MDS 9120 Switch.
