Cisco MDS 9148 (DS-C9148-K9) Full Product Description

1. Short Sales Title

2. Official Product Overview

Core Hardware Differentiators vs Older MDS 9124 / MDS 9134 / MDS 9140

1. 48 total autosensing 1/2/4/8Gbps FC SFP ports,all ports full non-blocking line-rate bandwidth (no oversubscription); MDS 9140 uses split oversubscribed host ports, MDS 9124 only supports max 24 ports, MDS 9134 only 34 ports.
2. Flexible pay-as-you-grow port licensing: Ships with only 16 active ports factory-default, expandable in 8-port increments to 32 or full 48 active ports via software license without hardware replacement.
3. Massive 768 Gbps full-duplex aggregate fabric capacity, far exceeding the 416 Gbps of MDS 9134 and 80 Gbps shared bus of MDS 9140, optimized for high-density multi-8G ISL trunk and virtualization burst I/O workloads.
4. Dual independent hot-swappable fan modules with optimized thermal design to sustain full 48-port populated load, no mandatory fan upgrade for high-port licensing activation.
5. Dual high-wattage 300W AC redundant power supplies, stable under full 48×8G SFP transceiver load, unmatched by low-power MDS 9120/9124 chassis.
6. Native NPV/NPIV hardware acceleration for blade server rack-scale edge SAN consolidation, built-in FICON mainframe storage protocol support, and slow-drain detection ASIC feature to mitigate buffer credit starvation storms.
7. Standard front-to-back cold aisle airflow (DS-C9148-HV-K9 is separate high-voltage DC telecom variant; PSUs/fans are color-coded and non-interchangeable between AC/HV SKUs).

Core High-Availability Design

Model Suffix Breakdown

• DS-C: Cisco MDS storage switch part number prefix
• 9148: MDS 9100 fixed fabric series, total 48 autosensing 1/2/4/8G Fibre Channel SFP ports, all full non-blocking bandwidth
• K9: Standard AC power SKU with full multilayer NX-OS/SAN-OS enterprise feature license (HV DC telecom variant: DS-C9148-HV-K9)

Chassis Port & Hardware Layout Definition

1. Front Fibre Channel Ports: 48×hot-swappable SFP slots, autosensing 1/2/4/8 Gbps Fibre Channel, every port full non-blocking line-rate bandwidth
   • Factory default: Only 16 ports licensed active
   • Expand via 8-port incremental software licenses to 32 ports, then full 48 ports
2. Out-of-Band Management Interfaces
   • RJ45 RS232 serial console port for local CLI access
   • Isolated 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet out-of-band management port for remote SSH/Telnet/SNMP
   • External USB Type-A flash storage slot for NX-OS/SAN-OS image upgrades, configuration backup and syslog export
   • Physical reset button for factory default recovery
3. Front Diagnostic LED Bank: Global system status, power supply A/B, fan module, port link/activity, fault alarm, UID blue beacon indicator
4. Rear Compartment Layout: Dual independent hot-swappable 300W AC power supply bays supporting 1+1 N+1 power redundancy
5. Front lower fan bays: Dual separate hot-swappable multi-fan variable-speed fan modules
6. Airflow Specification: Fixed front-to-back cold air intake at port panel, hot exhaust from rear power supply compartment (cold aisle standard only, no reversed hot-aisle airflow hardware option)

Supported Transceivers & Power Options

1. Fibre Channel SFP transceivers (sold separately):
   • DS-SFP-FC8G-SW: 8Gbps short-wave multimode (500m)
   • DS-SFP-FC8G-LW: 8Gbps long-wave single-mode (10km)
   • Backward compatible with 4G / 2G / 1G FC SFPs for legacy storage interoperation
2. Power supply compatibility: Only 300W AC PSUs for DS-C9148-K9; HV DC 300W PSUs exclusive to DS-C9148-HV-K9 variant, airflow-specific PSUs cannot be mixed
3. No Ethernet downlink ports; purpose-built exclusively for Fibre Channel block storage SAN workloads

3. Hardware & Physical Specifications

Core SAN Switching & Routing Performance

• Total non-blocking fabric aggregate capacity: 768 Gbps full-duplex system-wide bandwidth
• Wire-speed forwarding rate: Up to 768 Mpps Fibre Channel frame switching at full 8G line rate
• Low-latency dynamic shared packet buffer pool optimized for OLTP database, virtualization and backup tape burst I/O
• FC address table capacity: 1,048,576 N_Port identifiers (massive scale for blade server rack deployments)
• Maximum VSANs: 4094 isolated virtual storage fabrics
• Maximum active zone sets: 256 zone sets, up to 2000 zones per fabric
• Jumbo FC frame MTU support: Up to 9000 bytes
• Port modes supported: F (Fabric host), FL (Loop), TL (Extended Loop), E (ISL), TE (Extended ISL), NP (NPV edge host)
• Link aggregation: PortChannel for multi-port FC ISL trunking, max 8 FC ports per logical bundle
• NPV/NPIV native feature: Consolidate thousands of server host ports upstream to MDS core directors without core fabric overhead
• Slow drain detection hardware ASIC: Automatically isolate slow storage targets to prevent fabric-wide credit starvation storms

Power & Cooling System

• Power supply bays: 2 hot-swappable redundant slots, each 300W AC PSU fully powers full chassis independently (1+1 N+1 failover)
• AC input voltage range: 100–240V 50/60Hz universal auto-ranging AC
• Fan modules: Two separate hot-swappable multi-fan assemblies; single fan module failure triggers SNMP alert without SAN traffic outage, minimum two functional fans required for stable operation
• Airflow: Fixed front-to-back cold aisle intake, rear hot exhaust
• Real-time monitoring: Fan RPM, internal chassis temperature, PSU voltage, SFP optical power, port and module fault logging via console syslog and SNMP v1/v2c/v3 traps

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Rack form factor: 1 RU standard 19-inch horizontal rack mount
• Dimensions (H × W × D): 4.37 cm × 44.45 cm × 56.64 cm (1.72 × 17.5 × 22.3 inches)Cisco
• Bare chassis weight: 8.5 kg (18.7 lbs) without power supplies/fan modules; fully loaded max weight 12.7 kg (28 lbs) with dual PSUs and dual fan trays installed
• Operating temperature range: 0°C to 40°C (32°F–104°F); certified altitude up to 2000 meters
• Storage temperature range: -40°C to 70°C (-40°F–158°F)
• Relative humidity: 10%–90% non-condensing operating; 5%–95% non-condensing storageCisco
• Compliance Certifications: FCC Class A, UL 60950-1, CE, VCCI Class A, NEBS Level 3, RoHS compliant
• Typical power consumption: 110W fully populated with 48×8G SFP transceivers under full traffic load

Out-of-Band Management Interfaces

• RJ45 RS232 serial console port for local CLI access
• Dedicated isolated 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band Ethernet management port
• External USB flash storage for offline NX-OS/SAN-OS image and configuration archives
• Front panel multi-status LED bank for real-time hardware health visibility

4. Full SAN-OS / NX-OS Multilayer Feature Set

Layer 2 Fibre Channel Switching & Fabric Services

• VSAN Virtual Storage Area Network: Logical fabric isolation for multi-application/multi-tenant storage segmentation
• Hard port zoning + soft WWN zoning for granular host-storage access control
• Full FICON protocol support for IBM mainframe disk/tape storage connectivity
• Inter-Switch Link (ISL) trunking, PortChannel load balancing across multiple 8G FC ports
• DTP Fibre Channel trunk negotiation, FSPF fabric dynamic domain ID routing
• Local SPAN, RSPAN remote SAN traffic mirroring for storage performance troubleshooting
• Broadcast/multicast storm suppression per FC port to eliminate fabric flooding outages
• NPV N_Port Virtualizer edge switch mode for large core-edge SAN scaling
• Slow drain detection and congestion isolation hardware feature to mitigate buffer credit starvation

Multilayer Storage Routing & Multicast Features

• FSPF Fibre Channel Shortest Path First dynamic fabric routing for multi-switch SAN topologies
• PIM-SM IP multicast for cross-fabric backup replication traffic
• Static FC route configuration for cross-VSAN inter-fabric connectivity
• Licensed IVR Inter-VSAN Routing feature for controlled data movement between isolated VSANs

Advanced SAN QoS & Traffic Prioritization

• Four hardware priority queues per Fibre Channel port for tiered storage traffic classification
• Ingress frame policing, egress bandwidth shaping to throttle low-priority backup/replication streams
• Pre-built QoS templates for production OLTP, tape backup, and disaster recovery replication streams
• Dedicated high-priority queue for low-latency database and virtualization I/O workloads

Enterprise SAN Security Suite

• Port security: Static WWN locking to block unauthorized server/storage device attach
• RBAC Role-Based Access Control granular CLI user privilege partitioning
• SSHv2 encrypted remote CLI management, SNMPv3 secure monitoring, encrypted startup configuration files
• DH-CHAP mutual authentication for ISL inter-switch link fabric authentication
• Port lockdown, VSAN read-only access permissions, full audit logging for all fabric configuration changes
• FIPS 140-2 validated security compliance for government and financial regulated environments

Monitoring & SAN Management Tools

• Cisco DCNM-SAN / Fabric Manager centralized graphical SAN fabric monitoring and provisioning
• Isolated out-of-band Ethernet management port for offline device access during fabric outages
• External USB flash storage for offline NX-OS/SAN-OS image upgrades and configuration backup archives
• Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) automatic MDS fabric neighbor device discovery
• Real-time storage telemetry: Port throughput, latency, frame error counters, SFP optical power diagnostics
• Event notification via email, syslog and SNMP traps for fabric fault alerting
• GOLD generic online diagnostics for continuous hardware health validation

5. High Availability Capabilities (Core Differentiators vs MDS 9124-K9 / MDS 9140-K9)

1. Dual hot-swappable high-wattage 300W AC redundant power supplies (1+1 power failover, stable under full 48×8G port load)
2. Dual independent hot-swappable fan modules with individual fault detection and real-time SNMP fault alerting
3. Full OIR Online Insertion and Removal support for fan modules, power supplies and SFP transceivers; live FRU replacement without chassis power shutdown or SAN traffic drop
4. All 48 ports full non-blocking 8Gbps bandwidth (no oversubscription bottlenecks of MDS 9140)
5. Pay-as-you-grow incremental 8-port licensing scaling from 16 base active ports up to full 48 ports, flexible to match storage capacity growth
6. Massive 768 Gbps single-chassis non-blocking fabric capacity, far exceeding MDS 9134 (416G) and MDS 9140 (80G)
7. NPV/NPIV optimized ASIC architecture for massive blade server rack edge SAN consolidation
8. Slow drain detection hardware feature absent from legacy MDS 9120/9124 switches
9. Dual-image SAN-OS/NX-OS unified software stack for seamless migration to modern NX-OS automation workflows
10. Limitation: Fixed front-to-back airflow only, no modular port card expandability like MDS 9200/9500 directors, no native 16G/32G FC generation support

6. Typical Deployment Scenarios

1. Medium Virtualized Data Center Rack-Scale Edge SAN Switch
   Compact 1RU rack form factor fits standard server edge rack positions; scalable pay-as-you-grow port licensing allows customers to start with minimal 16 ports and expand to full 48 as virtualization and flash storage capacity grows, consolidating hundreds of virtual machine hosts and high-performance disk arrays in leaf-spine SAN architectures.
2. Large Multi-Building Enterprise Campus Core-Edge SAN Fabric
   Multiple DS-C9148-K9 edge switches deployed per building rack, interconnected via high-speed 8G ISL trunk links to central MDS 9500 core director, forming unified enterprise-wide VSAN-separated production, test and backup storage fabrics for thousands of end-users.
3. Large Regional Mission-Critical Headquarters SAN
   Financial, healthcare and government headquarters require complete dual power + cooling redundancy to avoid site-wide catastrophic storage outages; integrates FICON mainframe replication, OLTP database storage and high-density blade server rack consolidation in a single space-efficient 1RU chassis.
4. Medium Service Provider Multi-Tenant PoP Edge Storage Switch
   VSAN isolation feature logically separates dozens of enterprise customer storage environments on a single physical MDS 9148 switch, reducing hardware TCO for carrier PoP edge storage workloads with large FC address table scale for multi-tenant deployments.
5. Legacy MDS 9124/9134 SAN Hardware Refresh Upgrade
   Drop-in performance upgrade for aging 4G MDS 9124 fixed fabric switches, fully backward compatible with existing 4G Fibre Channel SFP transceivers while unlocking native 8G line-rate bandwidth, larger fabric capacity, expandable port licensing and slow-drain congestion mitigation hardware.

7. Standard Package Contents

Items Sold Separately (Not Included)

• Dual 300W AC hot-swappable redundant power supply units
• Dual hot-swappable fan modules
• Supervisor is integrated on chassis backplane (no separate supervisor card required)
• DS-SFP-FC8G-SW / DS-SFP-FC8G-LW Fibre Channel SFP optical transceivers (backward compatible with 1/2/4G FC SFPs)
• Optional incremental 8-port software licenses to unlock 32 or full 48 active FC ports
• RS232 serial console rollover cable
• USB flash memory sticks for NX-OS/SAN-OS image and configuration storage
• Fibre channel patch cords, cable management accessories, rack cable guides

Short Commercial Catalog Version (For Quotation & Datasheet Use)