These products are intended to redefine SAN scalability, allowing the MDS 9513 Multilayer Director to scale to 528 1/2/4Gbps Fibre Channel ports, and the MDS 9509 and MDS 9506 Multilayer Directors to scale up to 336 and 192 1/2/4Gbps Fibre Channel ports, respectively.

Additionally, the company says, the switching modules can be deployed in existing MDS 9500 and 9200 Series products, providing 4- and 10Gbps technology, advanced functionality and investment protection.

These products retain the complete MDS 9000 feature set, including Virtual SANs (VSANs), Inter-VSAN Routing, and advanced management, diagnostic and security features, Cisco says.

Additionally, the features in SAN-OS 3.0 include advanced port bandwidth management and enhanced FICON capability, Cisco adds.

The Cisco MDS 9513's high port density, coupled with Cisco VSAN and Inter-VSAN Routing capabilities would allow us to consolidate SANs and to logically separate project data while at the same time simplifying our storage management, says Peter Haas, director of Network and Data Management in the High Performance Computing Centre (HLRS), at University of Stuttgart.

During our tests of the Cisco MDS 9513 director, we also found the 10Gbps capability to be very helpful for interconnecting our multiple campus SANs.

Investment protection in the form of solid backward and forward compatibility is very important to customers who must control costs but still want to take advantage of the latest technology, says James Opfer, research vice-president at the Gartner Group.

In addition, scalability is key to achieving low total cost of ownership. It has the potential to reduce initial capital outlays, as well as lower recurring management expenses.