Cisco Systems Inc. is adding new midrange products to its Multilayer DataCenter Switch family, officials of the networking giants storage division will announce this week.
The new switches are called MDS 9120 and MDS 9140, with 20 and 40 ports, respectively, and are intended to compete directly against Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and McData Corp. offerings, officials said.
Both switches are 1U enclosures and share the high-end MDS 9500 series high-availability and management features, instead of sacrificing functionality for small size, officials said.
Storage vendors EMC Corp., IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Hitachi Ltd. will certify the switches and determine the actual availability and pricing. Certifications will begin this quarter, officials said.
The switches will include Ciscos new SAN-OS 1.2, which has improved security, management, troubleshooting and interoperability, and which can be downloaded later this month for Ciscos other switches, officials added.
In addition, Cisco has licensed Fibre Connect specifications from IBM, for the MDS family to be Ficon-compliant later this year or early in 2004, they said, in San Jose, Calif.