Cisco aggregates SAN, LAN traffic over DWDM

Cisco wants businesses to aggregate storage network traffic and other services over the same wide-area fiber connections, and sees itself moving increasingly into the video post-processing market, a vast consumer of bandwidth.

The company announced two enhancements to its ONS 15530 Multiservice Aggregation Platform at the CeBIT trade show last week, with the aim of combining storage area network traffic with other services such as Gigabit Ethernet over a single optical fiber link using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM). DWDM systems transmit multiple signals simultaneously down a single optical fiber by transmitting each one on a different wavelength, or color, of light.

“With a DWDM platform like this, we are able to put storage and other applications across a single fiber ring,” said Geraint Anderson, vice president of optical and PTT marketing for Cisco in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, at a news conference at the show.

The Eight-port Fibre Channel/Gigabit Ethernet Aggregation Card can be used to combine up to eight Fibre Channel, FICON or Gigabit Ethernet signals on a single 10G bit/sec wavelength in a DWDM system, while the 2.5G bit/sec ITU Trunk Card can be used to combine multiple ESCON, Fibre Channel, FICON or Gigabit Ethernet services over a single ITU wavelength, the company said in a statement.

Where such services are carried between sites over a metropolitan-area fiber ring, the 2.5G bit/sec ITU Trunk Card can be used to add or drop a few services on the fiber at each site, the statement said.

The company did not announce the price of the new cards or when they will be available.

Cisco also named two companies that have used its equipment to aggregate storage networking and other services over a single fiber connection.

German utility company Mainova, in Frankfurt am Main, is using the ONS 15540 Extended Services Platform to multiplex several Fibre Channel storage connections with LAN traffic over a single fiber, linking different campus sites to remote data centers, providing backup and simplifying the task of data recovery in the event of a disaster, Cisco said.

Another Cisco customer, the Flemish public broadcasting company Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroep (VRT) in Brussels, is using Cisco’s MDS family of SAN switches to integrate storage network traffic with an existing IP data network over fiber, Cisco said.

VRT’s move is a sign of changing times in the broadcasting industry. Although many video processing companies in the broadcasting industry have been pushing digital video around high-speed data networks for some years now, they have not always used IP – but that could change.

“We think most (video) post-production will go IP-based,” said Mark de Simone, vice president of technology solutions and corporate marketing for Cisco in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Digital video will play a greater part in Cisco’s future too, de Simone predicted. “We see video as a major driver for our company,” he said.

Peter Sayer is with the IDG News Service, a Network World affiliate.