Cisco MDS 9148 User Manual

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Data Sheet

Cisco MDS 9148 Multilayer Fabric Switch

Product Overview

The Cisco® MDS 9148 Multilayer Fabric Switch (Figure 1) is a high-performance, flexible, cost-effective platform
with the industry’s highest port density and lowes t power consumption available in a c ompact one rack-unit (1RU)
chassis form factor. It provides 48 line-rate 8-Gbps ports for storage networking deployments in small, medium­sized, and large enterprise environments. The Cisco MDS 9148, based on a purpose-built “s witch-on-a-chip”
application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), offers outstanding value by providing high-availability, security, and
ease of use at a cost-effective price. With the flexibility to expand from 16 to 48 ports in 8-port increments, the
Cisco MDS 9148 offers the densities required to scale from an entry-level departmental switch to top-of-the-rack
switch to edge switch connectivity into enterprise core SANs. The Cisco MDS 9148 delivers a nonblocking

architecture, with all 48 1/2/4/8-Gbps ports operating at line rate concurrently.
The Cisco MDS 9148 supports Zero-Touch installation as well as the Cisco Device Manager Quick Configuration

Wizard, which allow it to be deployed quickly and easily in networks of any size. Powered by Cisco MDS 9000
NX-OS Software, it includes advanced storage networking features and functions and is compatible with Cisco
MDS 9500 Series Multilayer Directors and Cisco MDS 9200 and other 9100 Series Multilayer Fabric Switches,

providing transparent, end-to-end service delivery in core-edge deployments.

Figure 1. Cisco MDS 9148 Multilayer Fabric Sw itch

Highlights

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High-performance with exceptional flexibility: The Cisco MDS 9148 offers up to 48 autosensing Fibre
Channel ports capable of speeds of 1, 2, 4, and 8 Gbps in a compact 1RU form-factor chassis with 8 Gbps
of dedicated bandwidth for each port and an aggregate platform bandwidth of 768 Gbps. The Cisco MDS
9148 comes with three preconfigured models for 16, 32, or 48 ports. The 16- and 32-port models can be
upgraded onsite to enable additional ports by adding one or more 8-port Cisco MDS 9148 On-Demand Port
Activation licenses.

●

Intelligent storage networking services at a cost-effective price: The Cisco MDS 9148, powered by Cisco
MDS 9000 NX-OS Software, offers intelligent storage networking capabilities such as virtual SANs
(VSANs), Inter-VSAN Routing (IVR), link aggregation using PortChannels, quality of service (QoS), and
security. These features make it easy to design, deploy, provision, and manage the Cisco MDS 9148 either
as a standalone departmental SAN switch or as a top-of-the-rack switch or an edge switch in an enterprise
core-edge SAN.

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Smart Zoning: When the Smart Zoning feature is enabled, Cisco MDS 9000 Family fabrics provision the
hardware access control entries specified by the zone set more efficiently, avoiding the superfluous entries
that would allow servers (initiators) to talk to other servers, or allow storage devices (targets) to talk to other
storage devices. This feature makes larger zones with multiple initiators and multiple targets feasible
without excessive consumption of hardware resources. Thus, smart zones can correspond to applications,
application clusters, hypervisor clusters, or other data center entities, saving the time that administrators
previously spent creating many small zones, and enabling the automation of zoning tasks.

●

Simplified scalable deployment of virtual machine-aware SANs: In a virtual machine environment in which
many host operating systems or applications are running on a physical host, the Cisco MDS 9148 uses
N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) technology to provide independent management for each virtual machine.
Furthermore, the Cisco MDS 9148 provides Cisco N-Port Virtualization (NPV) and fabric-port (F-port)
trunking and channeling features to enable SANs to be scaled without reaching Fibre Channel domain ID
limits. The Cisco FlexAttach feature enables transparent server deployment and movement without SAN
reconfiguration.

●

High-availability platform for mission-critical deployments: The Cisco MDS 9148 is designed for
environments in which downtime is unacceptable. It offers nondisruptive software upgrades, dual redundant
hot-swappable power supplies (with integrated fans), dual redundant hot-swappable fan trays, VSANs for
fault isolation, Inter-VSAN Routing (IVR) for sharing resources across VSANs, PortChannels for Inter­Switch Link (ISL) resiliency, and F-port trunking for resiliency on uplinks from a Cisco MDS 9148 operating
in NPV mode.

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Comprehensive security framework: The Cisco MDS 9148 supports as standard role-based access control
(RBAC) using RADIUS or TACACS+ authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) functions, VSAN
fabric isolation, intelligent packet inspection at the port level, Fibre Channel Security Protocol (FC-SP)
host-to-switch and switch-to-switch authentication, Secure FTP (SFTP), Secure Shell Version 2 (SSHv2)
and Simple Network Management Protocol Version 3 (SNMPv3) implementing Advanced Encryption
Standard (AES), control-plane security, hardware-enforced zoning, broadcast zones, and management
access. Although rarely needed in most switch fabric installations, an extensive set of even more innovative
and powerful security features and functions is available with the optional Cisco MDS 9000 Family
Enterprise Package License.

●

Simplified storage management: The Cisco MDS 9148 supports SAN plug-and-play capabilities, including
new Zero-Touch Installation deployment and provisioning, and offers built-in storage network management,
with all features available through a command-line interface (CLI) or the Cisco Data Center Network
Manager (DCNM) for SAN Essentials Edition (formerly Cisco Fabric Manager), a centralized management
tool with task-based wizards that simplifies management of a standalone switch or multiple switches and
fabrics.

●

Sophisticated diagnostics: Industry-leading intelligent diagnostics s uch as Fibre Channel ping, Fibre
Channel traceroute, Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN), Cisco Fabric Analyzer, and an integrated Call Home
capability to enhance reliability, facilitate faster problem resolution, and reduce service costs.

●

Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): Common platform architecture and the use of Cisco MDS 9000
NX-OS Software intelligent storage networking services across all Cisco MDS 9000 Family switches reduce
ongoing operating expenses by providing a consistent set of provisioning, management, and diagnostic
capabilities.

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Main Features and Benefits

Exceptional Flexibility for High-Performance SANs

The Cisco MDS 9148 offers up to 48 autosensing Fibre Channel ports capable of speeds of 8, 4, 2, and 1 Gbps in
a compact 1RU form-factor chassis. With 8 Gbps of dedicated bandwidth for each port and aggregate platform
bandwidth of 768 Gbps, the Cisco MDS 9148 is designed to meet the performance and scalability requirements of
the most demanding environments.

The flexibility of the Cisco MDS 9148 is provided by the Cisco MDS 9148 On-Demand Port Activation license,
which allows the addition of eight 8-Gbps ports. Customers have the option of purchasing preconfigured models of
16, 32, or 48 ports and upgrading the 16- and 32-port models onsite all the way to 48 ports by adding these
licenses. With advanced storage networking capabilities built into the platform, the Cisco MDS 9148 is an ideal
choice either as a standalone departmental SAN switch or as a top-of-the-rack switch or an edge switch in an
enterprise core-edge SAN.

The Cisco MDS 9148 supports hot-swappable autosensing Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) and Enhanced
SFP (SFP+) optics with interfaces for 8, 4, 2, and 1 Gbps. Individual ports can be configured with either short- or

long-wavelength optics for connectivity up to 860 meters (m) and 31 kilometers (km), respectively.

VSANs for Virtualization, Segmentation, and Isolation

VSAN, an industry standard for fabric virtualization capabilities, enables more efficient storage network use by
creating hardware-based isolated environments within a single physical SAN fabric or switch. Up to 32 VSANs are
supported per switch. Each VSAN can be zoned as a typical SAN and maintains its own fabric services and
management domains for added scalability and resilience. VSANs allow the cost of SAN infrastructure to be
shared among more users while helping ensure segregation of traffic and retaining independent control of

configuration on a VSAN-by-VSAN basis.

Integrated VSAN Routing (IVR) for Highly Available, Scalable SANs

To deploy efficient, cost-effective, consolidated storage networks, the Cisco MDS 9148 supports IVR functionality.
IVR allows selective transfer of data traffic between specific initiators and targets on different VSANs while
maintaining isolation of control traffic within each VSAN, thereby maintaining fabric stability and availability.
Integrated IVR lowers TCO by eliminating the need for external routing appliances, greatly increasing routing
scalability while delivering line-rate performance, simplifying management, and eliminating the challenges

associated with maintaining separate systems.

Advanced Traffic Management for Resilient SANs

Advanced traffic management capabilities integrated into the Cisco MDS 9148 simplify deployment and
optimization of core-edge fabrics.

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Virtual output queuing helps ensure line-rate performance on each port, independent of traffic pattern, by
eliminating head-of-line blocking.

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Each port group consisting of 4 ports has a pool of 128 buffer credits, with a default of 32 buffer credits per
port. When extended distances are required, up to 125 buffer credits can be allocated to a single port within
the port group. This extensibility is available without additional licensing.

●

PortChannels allow users to aggregate up to 16 physical Inter-Switch Links (ISLs) into a single logical
bundle, providing load-balancing bandwidth use across all links. The bundle can consist of any port from the
switch, helping ens ure that the bundle remains active even in the event of a port group failure.

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Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF)-based multipathing provides the intelligence to load balance across up to
16 equal-cost paths and, in the event of a switch failure, dynamically reroute traffic.

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QoS can be used to manage bandwidth and control latency, to prioritize critical traffic.

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Comprehensive port and flow statistics facilitate sophisticated performance analysis and service-level
agreement (SLA) accounting.

Simplified Scalable Deployment of Virtual Machine-Aware SANs

Cisco MDS 9148 provides the same consistent, policy-based SAN capabilities to individual virtual machines as
those available to physical servers. With NPIV, a standard Fibre Channel protocol feature, individual virtual
machines assume a full identity on the SAN so that Fibre Channel services such as zoning, QoS, performance
monitoring, and security can be provided to each virtual machine.

Given that the number of Fibre Channel domain IDs in a Fibre Channel SAN environment is limited, larger core­edge enterprise SAN environments using the Cisco MDS 9148 as a top-of-the-rack switch or as an edge switch
can be deployed by enabling the Cisco NPV feature on the edge Cisco MDS 9148 so that no Fibre Channel
domain IDs are used by that switch. NPV aggregates locally connected hosts into one or more uplinks to core
switches in a pass-through manner without using a Fibre Channel domain ID. The F-port trunking feature enables
multiple VSANs to be transported on the uplink from a Cisco MDS 9148 operating in NPV mode to the core switch.

The Cisco FlexAttach feature gives Cisco MDS 9148 customers the flexibility to add, move, or replace servers
easily without the need to reconfigure SAN switches or storage arrays. It provides this flexibility by virtualizing the

SAN identity of a server, which enables a server to retain its SAN identity even if the server is moved or replaced.
The Cisco MDS 9148 is supported as an option by the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition, a

collaboration by Cisco, EMC, and VMware, which provides the Vblock™ Infrastructure Packages framework for
integrated virtualization solutions.

High-Availability Platform for Mission-Critical Environments

The Cisco MDS 9148 is designed for mission-critical availability. With nondisruptive software upgrades, hot­swappable redundant fans and power supplies, and the unique capability to automatically restart failed processes,
the platform defines a new standard for fabric switch availability.

High availability is implemented at the fabric level through the industry’s mos t robust and highest-performance
ISLs. The standard PortChannel feature allows users to aggregate up to 16 physical ports into one logical bundle.
The bundle can sustain the failure of any physical link without causing a reset. Additionally, FSPF multipathing
provides the intelligence to load-balance across up to 16 equal-cost paths and, if a switch fails, to dynamically
reroute traffic.

The F-port channeling feature enables up to 16 physical uplinks between a Cisco MDS 9148 operating in NPV
mode and the core switch to be bundled into a PortChannel. The Cisco MDS 9148 offers outstanding fabric switch
availability, reducing TCO.