Digital transformation is compounding the complexity for IT networks: the dependency of businesses on IT networks is increasing, there are more users and devices on the network than ever before and the demands on the networks to maintain business continuity are much higher than it used to be. As networks become critical to business operations, any network downtime can prove to be expensive. According to IHS, IT downtime costs North American business $700 billion annually. Network outages not only result in loss to business directly but also increase IT operating expenses. A network that is not inherently resilient and highly available is hard to manage and operate especially for critical deployments that do not have any appetite for downtime.
Cisco understands that business continuity is required for all its customers: large, mid-sized or small and the new Catalyst 9000 series switches from Cisco are built keeping network resiliency in mind. The award-winning Catalyst 9000 series switches bring in powerful innovations in both platform and software to ensure that you network is “ALWAYS ON”. Catalyst 9200 extends the same capabilities for smaller branch and mid-size networks.
The Catalyst 9000 series switches bring in redundancy in hardware to ensure that the network is immune to any hardware failures. The two most common reasons for hardware failure in an access switch across industry are power supply and fan failure. Power supply is susceptible to failure especially in regions that lack clean power and suffer from high power fluctuations. Likewise, fan failure may occur more frequently in an environment that is not controlled for dust or moisture. While it may not always be possible to remediate these environmental conditions, it is possible to add enough redundancy in the access switches to make sure they can withstand any such failures. Catalyst 9200 series switches come with two redundant power supplies and fans. The power supplies are also field replaceable so in case of a failure you can simply replace the power supply without having to replace the switch. In addition to that, Catalyst 9200 also offers the option to have field replaceable fans that can be easily replaced in case of failure. The system is designed to be able to run on a single fan in case of fan failure where the fan is fixed. This not only allows any failure in power supply or fans to be fixed within minutes with no interruption to the network but also reduces the overall TCO of your access network.
Power over Ethernet has been one of the most outstanding innovations in networking industry that allows devices to be powered up through an efficient PoE enabled port on the switch. While PoE power has all its advantages including optimization of power costs, any downtime of the network has a direct impact to the devices and clients that are powered through the access switches. All these devices would power recycle whenever the access switch that they are connected to goes through a reboot. Managing power recycle of a large number of devices in the network can be cumbersome. With the innovations in UADP ASIC and platform design, Catalyst 9200 series offer uninterrupted perpetual PoE power to the downstream devices even when the switch itself goes through a recycle as long as it is connected to a power source. This significantly shortens the recovery time and minimizes operational overhead of the network during a power recycle.
Catalyst 9200 series offers Stackwise technology that allows you to manage multiple switches as a single instance. This not only provides simplified management for multiple switches as a single stack with up to 160Gbps stack bandwidth but also allows for additional redundancy with Stateful Switchover (SSO) within a stack in case of failure.
All these benefits mentioned above and the industry's highest mean time between failure (MTBF) make Catalyst 9200 Series switches stand out against other switches in their class. Choose Catalyst 9200 Series switches; keep your business up and running seamlessly
