04 Ccna Data Center 640 - 916 meet the mds family!

00:00:00 - In the previous Nugget, we got ourselves acquainted with the 00:00:04 - stars of the show in the local area network side of the 00:00:08 - modern Cisco data center. 00:00:09 - Well to be fair, it's time for us to move over to the SAN 00:00:13 - side of the house, the storage area network, and meet the 00:00:16 - multilayer director switches, or MDS devices, that make up 00:00:21 - the storage area network. 00:00:24 - Now, this Nugget will not be as long as that Nexus Nugget 00:00:27 - because quite frankly we don't have as much to see here. 00:00:30 - But we are going to take a look at the 9500 series MDS 00:00:34 - devices, the 9124, the 9148, and the 9222i device from 00:00:42 - Cisco Systems. 00:00:43 - Obviously we're also going to talk about important topics 00:00:46 - like the high availability features of these particular 00:00:49 - devices, as well as licensing concerns. 00:00:54 - Now the modular depicted up at the top right, by the way, 00:00:57 - 9500 series, are the 9506, the 9509, and the 9513. 00:01:03 - Understand that port densities with these devices will run 00:01:06 - from 192 fiber channel ports on the 9506, the 9509, 336, 00:01:15 - and the 9513 a whopping 528 fiber channel ports possible. 00:01:21 - These devices, like their Nexus cousins, feature virtual 00:01:26 - output queuing capabilities in a non-blocking crossbar fabric 00:01:32 - infrastructure on the back plane. 00:01:34 - So there's a lot of attention that's given here to ensure 00:01:38 - there's not queuing congestion as fiber channel ports are 00:01:42 - communicating with each other. 00:01:43 - Remember, the big thing about the storage area network is to 00:01:48 - make sure we never have packet loss due to any type of 00:01:52 - congestion. 00:01:53 - The fiber channel infrastructure, the devices 00:01:56 - that rely on fibre channel, are going to expect there to 00:01:59 - be low latency and zero packet loss. 00:02:03 - Now another feature on the resume, or the brochure, for 00:02:07 - the MDS series would be high bandwidth. 00:02:10 - This is kind of funny because we know the Nexus series 00:02:13 - devices are certainly catching up in this area. 00:02:16 - But we do have things like 2.2 terabits per second on 00:02:20 - internal bandwidth, and we can go with 160 gigabits per 00:02:26 - second from switch to switch. 00:02:28 - This is thanks to 16 inter-switch links that can be 00:02:32 - bundled together in a port channel between our fiber 00:02:36 - channel devices. 00:02:37 - This used to be obviously blazing speeds that we didn't 00:02:42 - see in the local area network side of the house, but now of 00:02:45 - course with the Nexus devices we've 00:02:47 - caught up in that regard. 00:02:49 - Low latency is a big thing because we're talking about 00:02:53 - fiber channel in the storage area network, here. 00:02:56 - And we have less than 20 seconds per hop typically in 00:03:00 - the storage area network infrastructure. 00:03:03 - Now multiprotocols are supported but these aren't 00:03:06 - your grandfathers protocols that we might be used to. 00:03:09 - Obviously we're talking about things like fibre channel. 00:03:13 - Fibre Channel over Ethernet, which we certainly saw on the 00:03:16 - Nexus side of the house, FICON, and also Fibre Channel 00:03:22 - over IP and iSCSI protocols here. 00:03:26 - So these are differing protocols that we're used to 00:03:29 - seeing in the LAN environment. 00:03:32 - If you need review on protocols like iSCSI in fiber 00:03:36 - channel over IP, you're in the right place in 00:03:39 - this particular Nugget. 00:03:40 - Of course we will be going into detail later on about 00:03:43 - those particular protocols. 00:03:45 - It's a scalable architecture and it's one that supports a 00:03:49 - Cisco invention called the virtual storage area network. 00:03:53 - Now if you're like me and you come from a LAN background, 00:03:57 - you're going to feel very comfortable with the concept 00:03:59 - of a Virtual SAN. 00:04:01 - Because it is indeed the corollary to the virtual local 00:04:04 - area network. 00:04:05 - We have a secure environment here, in fact we even have a 00:04:09 - port security feature that we can enact in the 00:04:12 - storage area network. 00:04:13 - And finally, we have an unbelievable amount of high 00:04:18 - availability. 00:04:19 - We're talking dual supervisor engines, dual clocks, dual 00:04:23 - fans, dual power supplies, dual internal [INAUDIBLE], 00:04:27 - dual redundant fabric modules. 00:04:29 - So dual, dual, dual all over the place when it comes to the 00:04:35 - internal infrastructure of these MDS devices. 00:04:39 - Now what about supervisor engines for these modular 00:04:43 - storage area network directors? 00:04:45 - Well, just like on the Nexus side of the house, a second 00:04:48 - generation of Sup engine has indeed replaced the first. 00:04:51 - There's a Sup 2 and a Sup 2-A Now I bet you're wondering 00:04:56 - what in the world will be the difference between the Sup 2 00:04:59 - and the Sup 2a? 00:05:00 - The big thing, Fibre Channel over Ethernet support. 00:05:04 - Yup. 00:05:04 - So that is a key ingredient now with the Sup 2-A engine. 00:05:09 - Now there's something else that's interesting about these 00:05:12 - second generation supervisor engines. 00:05:16 - You see, they will provide what's called the 00:05:19 - intercrossbar fabric. 00:05:22 - They will provide-- 00:05:23 - they'll basically act as the traffic cop 00:05:26 - for the entire device. 00:05:28 - But only in what are now the more legacy chassis, and 00:05:32 - that's the 9506 and the 9509. 00:05:35 - So in the 9506 and the 9509 the supervisor engine is the 00:05:41 - traffic cop. 00:05:42 - It handles the intercrossbar fabric traffic direction 00:05:48 - functionality. 00:05:50 - But interestingly enough in the 9513 the Sup engines do 00:05:55 - not possess that functionality. 00:05:58 - They're going to step out of the way in the 9513 and 00:06:02 - they're going to let the intercrossbar fabric module 00:06:05 - handle that work and offload that from 00:06:08 - the supervisor engine. 00:06:11 - Now in the area of licensing please understand that in the 00:06:14 - SAN side of the house with these MDS devices we have both 00:06:18 - feature-based license-- 00:06:20 - and this what we're used to on Nexus side of the 00:06:22 - house, the LAN side-- 00:06:24 - but then over on the SAN we also have 00:06:25 - module-based licenses. 00:06:27 - So we can get licenses for specific modules that we 00:06:31 - insert into the MDS devices to enable the capabilities of 00:06:36 - those, oftentimes unique, modules. 00:06:39 - What are some examples of the feature based licenses? 00:06:42 - Well there's an enterprise license, and as you might 00:06:45 - guess this gives you security services, and additional 00:06:49 - services that we might find in the enterprise, like enhanced 00:06:53 - monitoring capabilities. 00:06:54 - There's licenses like SAN over IP, and sure enough, this is 00:07:00 - the license that we would get if we're interested in 00:07:02 - utilizing the Fiber Channel over IP protocol. 00:07:06 - There's a mainframe license and the mainframe license 00:07:10 - would give us the ability to run the FICON protocol. 00:07:13 - So all kinds of additional feature based licenses that we 00:07:17 - can add depending on the particular environment we find 00:07:21 - ourselves in. 00:07:22 - I gave just three examples there, obviously there are 00:07:26 - many, many different examples of different features you can 00:07:29 - add to the storage area network. 00:07:31 - For a complete list, just visit the home page of the MDS 00:07:35 - devices up at cisco.com. 00:07:38 - Now as promised another device that we can find in our 00:07:41 - storage area network is the Cisco MDS 9124 device. 00:07:47 - Notice this particular device has 24 line-rate, 4 gigabyte 00:07:51 - per second fiber channel ports. 00:07:53 - Notice that eight are licensed in the default configuration 00:07:58 - and then there is 16 on-demand ports that we can have for 00:08:02 - incremental licensing. 00:08:03 - This device is capable of N-port virtualization. 00:08:08 - This is a technology that will allow us to really scale our 00:08:11 - storage area network and not consume these precious domain 00:08:16 - IDs for each switch that we implement into the 00:08:20 - infrastructure. 00:08:21 - If all of this technology is foreign to you, if you're new 00:08:24 - to storage area networking, again I must remind you have 00:08:29 - no fear we will through storage area networking in 00:08:32 - depth later on in this particular course. 00:08:36 - And here we can see the MDS 9148 sure enough this feature 00:08:40 - is 48 line-rate 8 gigabyte per second fiber channel ports. 00:08:45 - We can go ahead and license this in a 16, in a 32, or in a 00:08:50 - full 48 port based configuration type. 00:08:53 - And there are eight ports available 00:08:55 - for incremental licensing. 00:08:57 - Once again here we have a NPV support capability so this 00:09:03 - device can assist in the scaling out of the storage 00:09:08 - area network. 00:09:10 - Now if the 9124 and the 9148 are guilty of anything it's 00:09:14 - that they're not the most flexible of devices. 00:09:17 - The 9222i is indeed that device. 00:09:22 - This device features an expansion slot for a wide 00:09:27 - varieties of modules that can be inserted for different 00:09:31 - types of connectivity. 00:09:32 - There are 18 fiber channel ports here once again at 4 00:09:36 - gigabytes per second. 00:09:38 - And there's also four gigabit ethernet ports on this device. 00:09:42 - These would be utilized in a Fiber Channel over IP or iSCSI 00:09:47 - type environment. 00:09:49 - So a much more flexible MDS switch here with the 9222i. 00:09:55 - Now let me tell you straight up here that the exam is not 00:09:59 - going to emphasize the MDS hardware in the 00:10:02 - way it does the Nexus. 00:10:04 - Sorry for that bias but it's just a fact of life let's take 00:10:08 - a quick exam time review though. 00:10:10 - Which supervisor module for the MDS supports Fibre Channel 00:10:13 - over Ethernet, you remember? 00:10:15 - Was it the Sup 1, the Sup 2, the Sup 2-A or the Sup 3? 00:10:19 - Well, that was that Sup 2-A that we discussed in this 00:10:22 - particular Nugget. 00:10:25 - So in this Nugget we took a look at the MDS family of 00:10:28 - equipment that we are responsible for as Cisco CCNA 00:10:34 - Data Center candidates. 00:10:36 - We took a look at the 9500 series, the 9124, the 9148, 00:10:41 - and the 9222i MDS class of devices. 00:10:46 - I hope this has been informative for you. 00:10:48 - And I'd like to thank you for viewing.