AXA says it will implement a combination of MDS 9509 directors and 9216 fabric switches as part of storage consolidation projects underway this year at its data centers in the U.S., France, Germany, and the U.K., with similar projects planned for two additional centers in Belgium and Australia in the coming years.
In a statement, Leon Billis, president of AXA's technology services division, says the company picked the Cisco MDS 9000 because of the switches' "industry-leading availability, scaleability, security, and management features." According to Cisco, the IP extension capabilities of the MDS 9000 were another major factor in winning the account.
Meanwhile, IBM says it will become the first vendor to resell Cisco's IP storage services module for the MDS 9000, an eight-port Gigabit Ethernet card that provides support for either iSCSI or Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP). It will also offer a CWDM option for the MDS 9000 that can extend Fibre Channel as much as 100 km (see Cisco Implants IP in SANs).
Whereas FCIP is intended for remote SAN extension and to interconnect SAN "islands" over long distances, the iSCSI option for the MDS 9000 is designed to allow non-Fibre Channel servers and devices to access SAN-attached storage. IBM says the module will support around 10 servers per iSCSI-enabled port; it plans to support Windows via Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq: MSFT) recently released iSCSI driver, as well as Linux servers (see Microsoft Sparks iSCSI Liftoff).
Sprint Corp. (NYSE: FON) recently demonstrated a disaster recovery application using the Cisco IP module to replicate data using FCIP over a simulated distance of 3,600 miles. In addition, European financial futures exchange Euronext LIFFE has been running the IP services module with several MDS 9509 switches to link its Amsterdam, Paris, and London data centers (see Sprint Stretches Storage Over IP and Cisco Touts Storage-Over-IP Project).
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
