Cisco Mds Fibre Channel Switch For Ibm Blade Center; Power Supplies - Cisco MDS 9500 Series Overview

Chapter 1 Product Overview
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

Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Switch for IBM Blade Center

The Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter is designed for IBM BladeCenter
environments. The Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch is based on the Cisco MDS 9000 Family SAN
switching technology, which integrates the Cisco MDS 9000 Family of switches and directors into a
blade-switch architecture. The advanced architecture of the Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for
IBM BladeCenter, along with 4-Gb technology, provides outstanding performance between
Bladeswitches and the rest of the Fibre Channel infrastructure.
The Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter provides 4-Gb Fibre Channel
performance to blade-server switching. It also provides network intelligence features such as virtual
SANs (VSANs), quality of service (QoS), and N-port interface virtualization (NPIV). It also offers
nondisruptive software upgrades and on-demand port activation and is the most complete embedded
Fibre Channel switching available for the IBM BladeCenter, BladeCenter-T, and BladeCenter-H
platforms.
The Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter provides up to 20 nonblocking 1-, 2-,
and 4-Gb Fibre Channel ports that are available in two configurations: 7 internal ports and 3 external
ports, or 14 internal ports and 6 external ports. Each port provides line-rate performance up to 4-Gb
without any performance loss for integrated features such as VSANs, QoS, or Network Address
Translation (NAT). The Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter supports up to 16
VSANs per blade switch.
Each external port on the Cisco MDS FC Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter also provides line-rate
performance up to 4-Gb for Inter-Switch Links (ISLs) or additional device connectivity such as storage
or host bus adapters (HBAs).
The Cisco NX-OS software provides role-based access control (RBAC) for management access of the
Cisco Fibre Channel Bladeswitch for IBM BladeCenter command-line interface (CLI) and Simple
Network Management Protocol (SNMP). For more information, see the Cisco 9000 Family Command
Reference.

Power Supplies

The Cisco MDS 9500 Series supports dual hot-swappable power supplies, each of which is capable of
supplying sufficient power to the entire chassis should one power supply fail. The power supplies
monitor their output voltage and provide status to the supervisor modules. To prevent the unexpected
shutdown of an optional module, the power management software only allows a module to power up if
adequate power is available.
The power supplies can be configured to be redundant or combined. By default, they are configured as
redundant, so that if one fails, the remaining power supply can still power the entire system. For
information about how to configure the power supplies, see the Cisco MDS 9000 Family NX-OS
Fundamentals Configuration Guide.
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Cisco MDS Fibre Channel Switch for IBM Blade Center
Cisco MDS 9500 Series Hardware Installation Guide
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