In Brief Network Appliance has added a new Cisco Fibre Channel switch aimed at the SMB market as an option with its arrays.

The Cisco MDS 9020 Series Fabric Switch will plug into NetApp's storage area network (SAN) gear and is meant to serve as a cost-effective, 20-port option. Other storage vendors such as EMC, IBM and HP had already announced their support for the Cisco product, which shipped last year. NetApp is now following, having completed the requisite testing and certification.

The Cisco hardware boasts 20 Fibre Channel ports of 4Gbps each and works with the entire line of Cisco MDS products. It takes up 1U of rack space.

Most customers will use this product to build out a modest SAN. Cisco and all of its partners bill the MDS 9020 as a great option for SMBs because of its low-cost. The product seems to start at around $10,000. ®

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