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Storage Switch Recommendation

mike-mchugh
Level 1
Level 1

SAN fabric switches- Which SAN switch would you recommend that will support both ISCSI and Fiber channel with additional fiber port greater then 25 on each switch. Customer currently has 4 16 port Cisco Switches he's looking to replace.

3 Replies 3

colin.mcnamara
Level 4
Level 4

off the top of my head two 9216i's along with either an additional 16 or 32 port card should serve you quite well. You would use the 16 port module if you need full rate, and the 32 port additional module if you are going to oversubscribe (quite normal for most hosts)

--Colin

If you find this helpful please rate it.

If the customer has 4 x 16 port switches such as Qlogic SANbox 2 or Brocade 3800's, he is going to get a shock at the price of the 9216i. Mind you there is no other option in the Cisco market unless you go to the 95xx series. The 9216i is probably targeted more at SAN extension with FCIP than presenting iSCSI.

I think Cisco could make a killing with something like a 9124i. iSCSI is going to grow and people want lower cost solutions.

Hint.. hint..

Stephen

The reason that the 9124 has such a great price point is that Cisco developed this totally buttkicking chipset on the backend to hand the fibre channel traffic at high speed, instead of the brocade way of chaining a whole bunch of chipsets together and trying to cover it up with buffer memory. In the end this results in major cost savings which it looks like Cisco is passing on to the consumer.

Now, I would venture to guess that ISCSI is not in the current capabilities of that chipset.

Also, it kind goes against the segment where I see the 9124 marketed to. I see the target market of the 9124 to be the smaller storage implementations where the storage "network" aspect is almost an afterthought.

While multi protocol access such as ISCSI is nice for these segments, the cost to provide this in the switches I think would price Cisco out of the market in this segment.

--Colin

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