Cisco FC SAN switch decision

Posted by Chopper3 on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Chopper3
Published on 2009-07-15T20:15:59Z Indexed on 2010/04/14 20:54 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 416

Filed under:

san

|

switch

|

cisco

|

fibre-channel

I've got to buy a bunch of FC SAN switches in the next week or so, I have to, and want to, buy Cisco MDSs.

Servers are HP BL490c G6's in C7000 chassis with Virtual-Connect Flex-10 ethernet interconnects and VC FC interconnects (Emulex HBAs btw), all running ESX 3.5U4 (for now).

I think I've only really got two choices;

MDS 9509's with dual-supervisors with a single 48-port 4Gb FC card
MDS 9222i's with single supervisor and the built-in 18-FC-port/4-GigE-FCIP-port option

Both have the same functionality (I think, buying the enterprise licence btw), both have plenty enough performance and adequate ports for now and the next three years.

The 9222i's are about 55% the price of the 9509's - logic says get the 'i's but will I really miss the dual-supervisors? I've got lots of 9509's with dual-supervisors that I'm very happy with but I'm not sure I've every benefitted from the dual-sups in the past and they are nearly twice the price - but if I don't buy them and miss them I can't retrofit them later.

What are your thoughts?

© Server Fault or respective owner

Related posts about san

Connection lost to iscsi san after problem with san

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi there, We have a cluster running with 3 VSpere ESX4 server that all are connected to a lefthand san through iSCSI. This all worked well but a week ago there was a problem with the san. After fixing that problem the VMWARE server continued working but this weekend I saw that 1 server didn't have… >>> More
SAN performance issues storing SQL Server tempdb on a SAN that's being backed up

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I'm afraid I don't know much about SAN's so please forgive my lack of detail or technical terms. As a developer I've just completed and put on an existing production system a new application but it would appear to have tipped the scales regarding the performance of the backups being taken from the… >>> More
cPanel web servers mounting home partition to a NAS or SAN

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hello, I currently have 2 cPanel web servers that are little 1RU dual cpu quad core xeons. They have a lot of resources for processing and handling web requests, and never exceed more than 10% cpu usage. They also have plenty of RAM. The problem is though that they both have RAID 1 160Gb SAS hard… >>> More
SAN with iSCSI-Target Performance Horrendous

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
We have a poor man's SAN setup in a 1U Ubuntu server running iSCSI-Target with two 300GB drives in RAID-0. We then are using it for block level storage for virtual machines. The hypervisor is connected to the SAN via gigabit on a dedicated VLAN and interfaces. We only have a single virtual machine… >>> More
2 Server FC SAN Configuration

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have 2 identical servers: -48GB Ram -8GigE NIC's -2FC NIC's -2x72GB RAID1 Hard Drives -Server 2008R2 Host I also Have a Fibre Channel SAN: -16x146GB RAID10 Hard Drives -2xDual-port FC Controllers (Controller A and B both have ports 1 and 2) -Server 1 has Fiber to Ports A1 and B1 -Server 2 has Fiber… >>> More

Related posts about switch

Problem connecting a 3Com 2952-Plus switch to a Cisco 3750 switch

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Connected a 3Com 2952-SFP Plus switch to a Cisco 3750 switch via fibre. There is a light on the 3Com end, but nothing at the Cisco end, and no traffic will flow. Have swapped SFP's, have swapped fibre cables, have used a different port on the Cisco, have even swapped the 3Com switch, but still no… >>> More
enable Cisco switch to communicate withe HP switch

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have one CISCO 2906g and hp 2626 switches i link them by MM fiber optic cable, the problem the cant communicate with each other, i verify there is no problem with cable and JBC's. win i connect other HP switch in the other end it will communicate without any problem, but not with CISCO >>> More
SQL Server database with clustered GUID PKs - switch clustered index or switch to sequential (comb)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
We have a database in which all the PKs are GUIDs, and most of the PKs are also the clustered index for the table. We know that this is bad (due to the random nature of GUIDs). So, it seems there are basically two options here (short of throwing out GUIDs as PKs altogether, which we cannot do (at… >>> More
Repository pattern - Switch out the database and switch in XML files

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Repository pattern - Switch out the database and switch in XML files. Hello I have an asp.net MVC 2.0 project and I have followed the Repository pattern. Periodically, I am losing access to the database server so I want to have another mechanism in place (XML files) to continue developing. It is… >>> More
MS SQL Database with clustered GUID PKs - switch clustered index or switch to sequential (comb) GUID

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
We have a database in which all the PKs are GUIDs, and most of the PKs are also the clustered index for the table. We know that this is bad (due to the random nature of GUIDs). So, it seems there are basically two options here (short of throwing out GUIDs as PKs altogether, which we cannot do (at… >>> More