The Cisco^® MDS 9250i Multiservice Fabric Switch (Figure 1), the next generation of the highly flexible, industry-leading, proven Cisco MDS 9200 Series Multiservice Switches, is an optimized platform for deploying high-performance SAN extension solutions, distributed intelligent fabric services, and cost-effective multiprotocol connectivity for both open systems and mainframe environments. With a compact form factor and advanced capabilities normally available only on director-class switches, the Cisco MDS 9250i is an ideal solution for departmental and remote branch-office SANs as well as in large-scale SANs in conjunction with the Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director.

The Cisco MDS 9250i offers up to forty 16-Gbps Fibre Channel ports, two 1/10 Gigabit Ethernet IP storage services ports, and eight 10 Gigabit Ethernet Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) ports in a fixed Two-Rack-Unit (2RU) form factor. The Cisco MDS 9250i connects to existing native Fibre Channel networks, protecting current investments in storage networks. The Cisco SAN Extension over IP application package license is enabled as standard on the two fixed 1/10 Gigabit Ethernet IP storage services ports, enabling features such as Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) and compression on the switch without the need for additional licenses. Also, using the eight 10 Gigabit Ethernet FCoE ports, the Cisco MDS 9250i platform attaches to directly connected FCoE and Fibre Channel storage devices and supports multitiered unified network fabric connectivity directly over FCoE.