Cisco MDS 9124V (DS-C9124V-K9) Full Product Description

1. Short Sales Title

2. Official Product Overview

1. DS-C9124V-8PITK9 (DS-C9124V-K9): Front-to-back cold aisle intake airflow, 8 default active FC ports, AC power
2. DS-C9124V-8PETK9: Back-to-front hot aisle exhaust airflow, 8 default active FC ports, AC power
3. DS-C9124V-24PEVK9: Factory pre-licensed full 24 active FC ports, hot aisle airflow
4. DS-C9124V-HV-K9: High-voltage DC telecom negative power variant (PSUs/fans non-interchangeable with AC SKUs)

Core Hardware Differentiators vs Legacy DS-C9124-K9 (4G old generation)

1. Native 64Gbps Fibre Channel autosensing SFP+ ports (backward compatible with 8/16/32G), full line-rate non-blocking per-port bandwidth; legacy MDS 9124 only max 4G FC supportCisco.
2. Pay-as-you-grow port licensing: Ships with only 8 active ports factory-default, expandable in single 8-port software license increments to 16 or full 24 ports without hardware replacementCisco.
3. Four independent hot-swappable fan modules with multi-fan fault tolerance (survive up to two fan failures without thermal shutdown), dual fan trays on old MDS 9124 with limited fault resilience.
4. Dual bidirectional airflow hardware options fully compatible with modern cold/hot aisle data center rack containment (legacy MDS 9124 only fixed front-to-back airflow).
5. Next-gen storage ASIC with native NVMe/FC support, slow drain detection/isolation, integrated SAN analytics, expanded FC address table and larger TCAM optimized for flash all-flash storage and virtualization workloadsCisco.
6. Modern NX-OS software stack with POAP zero-touch provisioning, REST API automation, FIPS 140-2 validated security, Secure Boot and full EVPN-FC interoperability absent from legacy SAN-OS MDS 9124 switches.
7. OIR live replaceable power supplies, fan modules and SFP+ transceivers without SAN fabric outage.

Core High-Availability Design

Model Suffix Breakdown

• DS-C: Cisco MDS storage switch part number prefix
• 9124V: MDS 9100-V modern 64G fixed fabric series, total 24 autosensing SFP+ Fibre Channel ports
• K9: Standard AC power SKU with full multilayer NX-OS enterprise feature license
• I = Intake (front-to-back cold aisle airflow), E = Exhaust (back-to-front hot aisle airflow)

Chassis Port & Hardware Layout Definition

1. Front Fibre Channel Ports: 24×hot-swappable SFP+ slots, autosensing 8/16/32/64 Gbps Fibre Channel, every port full non-blocking line-rate bandwidth
   • Factory default: Only 8 ports licensed active
   • Expand via single M91VX-PL8 8-port incremental software licenses to 16 ports, then full 24 ports
2. Out-of-Band Management Interfaces
   • RJ45 RS232 serial console port for local CLI access
   • Mini USB dual console port
   • Isolated 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band Ethernet management port
   • External USB Type-A flash storage slot for NX-OS image upgrades, configuration backup and syslog export
   • Physical reset button for factory default configuration 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 500W AC power supply bays supporting 1+1 N+1 power redundancy
5. Front lower fan bays: Four separate hot-swappable multi-fan variable-speed fan assemblies
6. Dual Airflow Specification (color-coded PSUs/fans non-interchangeable):
   • Intake (red): Front-to-back cold air intake at port panel, hot air exhausted from rear power supply panel (standard cold aisle rack)
   • Exhaust (blue): Back-to-front cold air intake at rear power panel, hot air exhausted from front port panel (hot aisle containment racks)

Supported Transceivers & Power Options

1. Fibre Channel SFP+ transceivers (sold separately):
   • DS-SFP-FC64G-SW: 64Gbps short-wave multimode
   • DS-SFP-FC64G-LW: 64Gbps long-wave single-mode
   • Backward compatible with 8G / 16G / 32G FC SFPs for legacy storage interoperation
2. Power supply compatibility: DS-C9124V-500AC 500W AC PSUs exclusive to DS-C9124V-K9; HV DC 500W PSUs for DS-C9124V-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 64G line rate
• Low-latency virtual output queuing (VOQ) shared packet buffer pool optimized for NVMe flash, OLTP database 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, maximum 16 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 buffer credit starvation storms
• Native NVMe/FC frame processing for low-latency all-flash storage workloads

Power & Cooling System

• Power supply bays: 2 hot-swappable redundant slots, each 500W AC PSU fully powers full chassis independently (1+1 N+1 failover protection)
• AC input voltage range: 100–240V 50/60Hz universal auto-ranging AC
• Fan modules: Four separate hot-swappable multi-fan assemblies; minimum two functional fans required to avoid thermal shutdown, up to two fan failures tolerated with four-fan full redundancy
• 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; major thermal alarm threshold at 55°C
• Typical power consumption: 85W fully populated with 24×64G SFP+ transceivers under full traffic load

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Rack form factor: 1 RU standard 19-inch horizontal rack mount
• Dimensions (H × W × D): 4.37 cm × 43.94 cm × 45.72 cm (1.72 × 17.3 × 16.3 inches)ManualsLib
• Bare chassis weight: 8.5 kg (18.7 lbs) without power supplies/fan modules; fully loaded max weight 10.9 kg (24 lbs) with dual PSUs and four populated 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 storage
• Compliance Certifications: FCC Class A, UL 60950-1, CE, VCCI Class A, NEBS Level 3, RoHS compliant, FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validatedCisco
• MTBF: 330,000 hours under standard enterprise data center operating conditions

Out-of-Band Management Interfaces

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

4. Full NX-OS Multilayer Feature Set (Cisco NX-OS MDS Release 9.x Universal Image)

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 Smart 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 mixed 8G/16G/32G/64G FC ports (max 16-port bundles)
• DTP Fibre Channel trunk negotiation, FSPF fabric dynamic domain ID routing
• Local SPAN, RSPAN, ESPAN enhanced remote SAN traffic mirroring for multi-session 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
• POAP Power On Auto Provisioning zero-touch switch deployment for mass access rack rollouts
• Integrated SAN Analytics: Real-time I/O latency, throughput, error telemetry for flash storage performance monitoring

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
• Native MPLS service suite (optional carrier license): MPLS LDP, VPLS, VPWS, EVPN-FC interoperability, MPLS VPN IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack
• PIM-SSM optimized for synchronous/asynchronous disaster recovery storage replication
• Static FC route redistribution between VSAN and MPLS domains

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, NVMe flash storage, tape backup, and disaster recovery replication streams
• Dedicated high-priority queue for low-latency real-time unified communications and database workloads
• Medianet media optimization for enterprise video and telepresence storage workflows

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, integrated with Cisco ISE
• 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
• Cisco TrustSec security group tagging for end-to-end policy segmentation across campus and data center domains
• Secure Boot and anti-counterfeit hardware validation to prevent unauthorized firmware tampering

Monitoring & SAN Management Tools

• Cisco DCNM-SAN centralized graphical SAN fabric monitoring, provisioning and REST API automation
• Isolated out-of-band Ethernet management port for offline device access during fabric outages
• External USB flash storage for offline NX-OS image upgrades, configuration backup archives and syslog export
• 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 without traffic interruption
• Onboard Python interpreter + NX-API REST interfaces for custom SAN automation scripts

5. High Availability Capabilities (Core Differentiators vs Legacy MDS 9124-K9 4G Model)

1. Dual hot-swappable high-efficiency 500W AC redundant power supplies (1+1 power failover protection, stable under full 24×64G port load)
2. Four redundant variable-speed hot-swappable fan modules with multi-fan fault tolerance (survive two fan failures without SAN outage)
3. Full OIR Online Insertion and Removal support for fan tray, power supplies and SFP+ transceivers; live FRU replacement without chassis power shutdown or SAN traffic drop
4. Native 64G full non-blocking per-port Fibre Channel bandwidth (legacy MDS 9124-K9 limited to maximum 4G line rate)
5. Pay-as-you-grow 8-port incremental licensing scaling from 8 base active ports up to full 24 ports, flexible to match storage capacity growth
6. Dual bidirectional airflow hardware options fully compatible with modern cold/hot aisle data center rack containment architectures
7. Expanded VOQ buffer, TCAM and SAN analytics scale optimized for NVMe flash and multi-tenant virtualization workloads
8. Modern NX-OS software stack with native EVPN, POAP, Secure Boot and REST API automation absent from legacy SAN-OS MDS 9124 switches
9. Limitation: Fixed compact 1RU chassis with no modular port card expandability like MDS 9200/9509 directors, no native 128G FC generation support

6. Typical Deployment Scenarios

1. Small Virtualized Data Center Rack-Scale Edge SAN Switch
   Compact 1RU rack form factor fits standard server edge rack positions; scalable pay-as-you-grow 8-port licensing allows customers to start with minimal 8 ports and expand to full 24 as virtualization and 64G NVMe flash storage capacity grows, consolidating hundreds of virtual machine hosts and high-performance all-flash arrays in leaf-spine SAN architectures.
2. Medium Multi-Building Enterprise Campus Core-Edge SAN Fabric
   Multiple DS-C9124V-K9 edge switches deployed per building rack, utilizing mixed 16G/32G/64G ISL trunk links to central MDS 9700 core director, forming unified enterprise-wide VSAN-separated production, test and backup storage fabrics for thousands of end-users.
3. Regional Mission-Critical Headquarters / Government SAN
   Financial, healthcare and government branch storage deployments require complete dual power + multi-fan hardware redundancy to avoid site-wide catastrophic storage outages; integrates FICON mainframe DR replication and blade server rack consolidation in a space-efficient 1RU chassis.
4. Small Service Provider Multi-Tenant PoP Edge Storage Switch
   VSAN isolation feature logically separates dozens of enterprise customer storage environments on a single physical MDS 9124V switch, reducing hardware TCO for small carrier PoP edge storage workloads with large FC address table scale for multi-tenant deployments.
5. Legacy MDS 9124 4G SAN Hardware Refresh Upgrade
   Drop-in performance upgrade for aging 4G MDS 9124 fixed fabric switches, fully backward compatible with existing 8G/16G Fibre Channel SFP transceivers while unlocking native 64G line-rate bandwidth, four-fan fault tolerance, modern NX-OS automation workflows and NVMe flash storage support.

7. Standard Package Contents

Items Sold Separately (Not Included)

• Dual 500W AC hot-swappable redundant power supply units (airflow color-matched I/E variants non-interchangeable)
• Four matching hot-swappable variable-speed fan modules (airflow color-matched to PSUs)
• M91VX-PL8 8-port incremental software activation licenses to expand active FC port count
• SFP (8G/16G) / SFP+ (32G/64G) optical fiber transceivers for all chassis FC ports
• RS232 serial console rollover cable, mini USB console cable
• USB flash memory sticks for NX-OS image and configuration storage
• Fibre channel patch cords, cable management accessories, rack cable guides

Short Commercial Catalog Version (For Quotation & Datasheet Use)