Cisco MDS 9000 Enterprise Package Software -
Overview & Features

Overview

The Standard software package that is bundled at no charge with the Cisco® MDS 9000 Series switches includes the base set of features that Cisco Systems® believes are required by most customers for building a storage area network (SAN). The Cisco MDS switch also has a set of advanced traffic engineering and advanced security features that are recommended for all Enterprise SANs. These features are bundled together in the Cisco MDS 9000 Enterprise package.

Features & benefits

• Inter VSAN Routing: Inter-VSAN routing enables selective transfer of data traffic between specific initiators and targets on different virtual SANs (VSANs) without merging VSANs into a single logical fabric. Fibre Channel control traffic does not flow between VSANs, nor can initiators access resources except for the ones designated with Inter-VSAN Routing.
  Inter-VSAN Routing enables sharing of resources across VSANs without compromising the VSAN benefits of scalability, reliability, availability and security.
  Inter-VSAN Routing can also be used in conjunction with FCIP to create more efficient business continuity and disaster recovery solutions.



• Quality of Service (QoS): The QoS feature in Cisco SAN-OS allows for data traffic to be classified into distinct levels for service differentiation.
  The QoS feature in Cisco SAN-OS allows for data traffic to be classified into distinct levels for service differentiation.



• Switch-Switch and Host-Switch Authentication: Fibre Channel Security Protocol (FC-SP) capabilities in Cisco SAN-OS provide switch-switch and host-switch authentication.
  Helps to eliminate disruptions that may occur due to unauthorized devices connecting to a large enterprise fabric.



• LUN Zoning: Cisco SAN-OS hardware enforced LUN Zoning ensures LUNs (Logical Unit Numbers) are accessible only by specific hosts.
  LUN Zoning provides a single point of control for managing secure access to LUNs across heterogeneous storage subsystems.



• Read-Only Zones: Cisco MDS switches support a type of Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) command as a zoning attribute. In conjunction with other zoning attributes, when a SCSI command type attribute is restricted to SCSI read commands, read-only zones can be created.
  This feature is especially useful for sharing volumes across servers for read-only operations for backup, data-warehousing etc.



• Port Security: This feature locks down the mapping of an entity to a switch port. The entity can be a host, target, or switch and is identified by its World Wide Number (WWN).
  Helps to ensure that SAN security is not compromised due to unauthorized devices connecting to a switch port.



• VSAN Based Access Control: This feature enables customers to define roles where the scope of the roles is limited to certain VSANs. For example, a network administrator role can be set up to allow configuration of all platform-specific capabilities, while VSAN-administrator roles can be set up to only allow configuration and management of specific VSANs.
  VSAN-based access control reduces SAN disruptions by localizing the effects of user errors to the VSANs for which the user has administrative privileges.
  Adds a layer of security where only administrators can configure switches within specified VSANs.