HP Cisco MDS 9124 Cisco MDS 9000 Family Release Notes for Cisco MDS NX-OS Rele - Page 36

New Features in Cisco MDS NX-OS Release 4.1(1b) Send documentation comments to [email protected] The SANTap protocol allows appliances to get an I/O copy for data replication, continuous data protection, and data migration without affecting the integrity, availability, and performance of the primary I/O between servers and storage. Cisco MDS 9000 family network-assisted storage applications with SANTap provide highly scalable solutions that allow efficient workload distribution to multiple appliances based on the application and source-and-target combinations. In NX-OS Release 4.1(1b), further enhancements have been made to RAM ARL and AVT. There are two key enhancements to the RAM ARL. The DPP limit is increased from 2 MB to 4 MB and there is a new SCP primitive to dynamically resize bitmap sizes. For an existing session, the new SCP primitive can be used to specify a new region size, which would trigger SANTap to recalculate the new bitmap size and re-allocate for the new size without deleting the SANTap session. IPv6 Support Beginning with NX-OS Release 4.1(1b), IPv6 is supported on the MSM-18/4 module and the MDS 9222i switch. NPV Traffic Management Cisco NX-OS Software supports industry-standard N-port identifier virtualization (NPIV), which allows multiple N-port fabric logins concurrently on a single physical Fibre Channel link. HBAs that support NPIV can help improve SAN security by enabling zoning and port security to be configured independently for each virtual machine (OS partition) on a host. In addition to being useful for server connections, NPIV is beneficial for connectivity between core and edge SAN switches. Cisco NX-OS Release 4.1(1b) includes a new MIB for N-Port Virtualization (NPV) traffic management that allows Cisco Fabric Manager to specify which NP-ports can be utilized by particular F-ports (servers) for connections to NPV core switches. The NPV traffic management feature allows end-users to manage available bandwidth to core switches by reserving NP-ports to carry traffic for specific servers. Control over the switch-wide load balancing mode has also been included in the MIB. When load balancing is enabled for switches operating in the NPV mode, the assignments of F-ports to NP-ports is updated (rebalanced). If a new NP-port is added while in the load balancing mode, the load balancing is evaluated and updated automatically. It is a disruptive process when rebalancing occurs on affected ports. CFS Distribution Using Static List Cisco NX-OS Release 4.1(1b) combines the Cisco Fabric Services (CFS) static list feature with the Fabric Manager NPV device discovery feature and provides a near-seamless user experience of managing NPV devices using CFS. The Cisco NX-OS software uses the CFS infrastructure to enable efficient database distribution and to foster device flexibility. It simplifies SAN provisioning by automatically distributing configuration information to all switches in a fabric. Cisco MDS 9000 Family Release Notes for Cisco MDS NX-OS Release 4.1(1b) 36 OL-17675-02