MDS 9216, 9216a and 9216i difference?

[yjdabear]

Could anyone provide a link or quick rundown of what distinguishes 9216, 9216a and 9216i?

[tblancha · Accepted solution]

The 9216A is the 2nd iteration of the 9216 and can handle 2nd generation line cards. All 921X's have the first blade being static and works as a single supervisor and the 2nd slot is open for an insertable blade. The 9216 and 9216A have 16 Fibre Channel ports in the first slot. Whereas the 9216I has 14 FC ports and two gigEthernet ports for ISCSI and/or FCIP.

[stephen2615]

We recently bought two 9216A's and when a 48 port card was shoved in it, it did not know what to do with the module. It seems that it had been shipped with SAN-OS 2.something. I thought this rather strange as the other had 3.0.1 pre installed. So, if the 9216A is for 2nd generation cards, why ship it with SAN-OS 2? Perhaps someone just had a bad day. I know I do.

I was a bit disappointed that the 9216A still has only 2 Gbps FC ports in the first blade especially as these switches are more inclined to be used as edge switches in bigger datacenters.

Stephen

[tblancha]

The 9216A can handle gen 1 or gen2 cards so it can run from 1.3 and up. But to run gen2 cards (the 12/24/48 port cards) it needs to be running 3.x code.