MDS 9500 EoS and EoL, What to do?

[dennis_hedman_nll]

Hi,

Our four MDS 9500 are going EoL next year. What product shall we go for.

Is MDS 9500 a dead end?

[Kris Vandecruys]

Hi Dennis,

Not sure if I understand you correctly, but Cisco currently has no plans to end the MDS9x00 line of products.  We actually just came out with a new generation of linecards and supervisors that support next-gen 10GbE interfaces.

If you have invested into the FC infrastructure, there is no reason to rip it all out of your datacenter and you can just continue using MDS products for the forseeable future. 

However, there's a lot moving and shaking (for the better) in the access layer of your network.  Are you aware of our Nexus range of products that offer consolidated networking access for servers that consolidate FC traffic and regular Ethernet into a single high speed link?  Contact your Cisco Account team for a full presentation on this,  in the mean time I suggest you check out the Nexus5596UP switch.

I hope this answers your question!

Best regards,

Kris

[maminhas]

Denis,

"Our four MDS 9500 are going EoL next year"  could be an incorrect or insufficient statement. in the sense like

95xx switch may have been running SUP 1 (supervisor 1 type hardware) ..which is definately going EOL.

However SUP1 is replaced/upgraded with SUP2 or SUP2A types now.

If  that is the case,

you simply need to upgrade slot 5&6 (for 9506/0509 chassis) / slot 7&8 (for 9513 chassis)  with newer hardware of SUP2 or SUP2A.

Hope that helps.