Accelerate I/O Traffic Across MAN or WAN Links

Learn more about Cisco MDS 9000 I/O Accelerator. (4:49 min)

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Improve remote I/O performance and bandwidth utilization over metro and wide area network links with Cisco I/O Accelerator (IOA). This fabric-based acceleration service is implemented on the Cisco SSN-16 Storage Services Node, MDS 9000 18/4-Port Multiservice Module, and MDS 9222i Multiservice Modular Switch. It requires MDS 9000 NX-OS Software Version 4.2 or later.

I/O Accelerator provides the following benefits:

It speeds up SCSI disk writes and tape reads and writes over MANs and LANs.
Because it's deployed as a fabric-based service, its service nodes can be located anywhere in the fabrics on each side of the remote link
Accelerator service nodes are clustered on each side of the remote link for scaling and for high availability
FCIP links can take advantage of the encryption and compression (as much as 5:1) built into the supporting hardware
Inter-Switch Links (ISLs) between a pair of 8 Gbps line cards can use Cisco TrustSec Fabric Channel link encryption to help secure data sent between data centers, and IOA can also add compression to MAN traffic
It is simple to install and manage. A Fabric Manager wizard simplifies configuring the infrastructure on each side of the MAN/WAN link
Insertion of the acceleration service into the data path is transparent and nondisruptive

Cisco MDS 9000 I/O Accelerator