The Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director is a director-class SAN switch designed for deployment in large-scale storage networks to enable enterprise clouds and business transformation. Layering a comprehensive set of intelligent features onto a high-performance, protocol-independent switch fabric, the Cisco MDS 9710 addresses the stringent requirements of large virtualized data center storage environments: uncompromising high availability, security, scalability, ease of management, and transparent integration of technologies for extremely flexible data center SAN solutions. Sharing the same operating system and management interface with other Cisco data center switches, the Cisco MDS 9710 enables seamless deployment of unified fabrics with high-performance Fiber Channel, IBM Fiber Connectivity (FICON), and Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity to achieve low total cost of ownership (TCO).