Cisco MDS 9124 Fibre Channel Switch

Reviews
By Dave Mitchell
published

IT Pro Verdict

Cisco's latest FC switch shows that SANs don't have to be expensive or complex to manage. The base price includes a lot of features other vendors would charge extra for and the port licensing scheme makes it highly flexible.

Verdict

Cisco's latest FC switch shows that SANs don't have to be expensive or complex to manage. The base price includes a lot of features other vendors would charge extra for and the port licensing scheme makes it highly flexible.

1U rack mount chassis

24 4Gbps FC ports

Supports 4/2/1Gbps SFPs

1GHz FreeScale MPC8541E

512MB SDRAM memory

256MB CompactFlash

RJ-45 serial port

10/100 Ethernet management port

Base price includes 8-port activation license, support for 16 VSANs, 16 buffer credits per port, Cisco Fabric Manager, Cisco Device Manager.

Options:

8-port activation license, £1,154

4Gbps SFP, £63

Redundant power supply, £236

Dave Mitchell
Dave Mitchell

Dave is an IT consultant and freelance journalist specialising in hands-on reviews of computer networking products covering all market sectors from small businesses to enterprises. Founder of Binary Testing Ltd – the UK’s premier independent network testing laboratory - Dave has over 45 years of experience in the IT industry.

Dave has produced many thousands of in-depth business networking product reviews from his lab which have been reproduced globally. Writing for ITPro and its sister title, PC Pro, he covers all areas of business IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, network security, data protection, cloud, infrastructure and services.