The next-generation Cisco® MDS 9148T 32-Gbps 48-Port Fibre Channel Switch (Figure 1) provides high-speed Fibre Channel connectivity for All-Flash arrays. This switch offers state-of-the-art analytics and telemetry capability built into its next-generation Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) platform. This switch allows seamless transition to Fibre Channel Non-Volatile Memory Express (FC-NVMe) workloads whenever available without any hardware upgrade in the SAN. It empowers small, midsize, and large enterprises that are rapidly deploying cloud-scale applications using extremely dense virtualized servers, providing the benefits of greater bandwidth, scale, and consolidation. Some of the main benefits for a small-scale Storage Area Network (SAN) are automatic zoning, nonblocking forwarding, and smaller port groups of 16 ports. Benefits for a mid- to large-size SAN include higher scale for Fibre Channel control-plane functions, virtual SANs, fabric login (FLOGI), device alias and name server scale, 48 ports of 32-Gbps non-oversubscribed line-rate ports, bidirectional airflow, and a fixed-form FC-NVMe-ready SAN switch with enhanced Buffer-to-Buffer (B2B) credits connecting both storage and host ports and Fibre Channel link encryption. Large-scale SAN architectures built with SAN core directors can expand 32-Gbps connectivity to the server rack using these switches in either switch mode or Network Port Virtualization (NPV) mode. Additionally, the switch supports enhanced diagnostic features such as Inter-Switch Link (ISL) and Host-Bus-Adapter (HBA) diagnostics, read diagnostic parameter, link cable beacon, and advanced reliability features such as Forward Error Correction (FEC) with HBA ports.
