What's involved with moving from MDS 9124 to MDS 9148S switches?

[GRANT GATHAGAN]

My current 9124 switches are EOL in 2019 and I'm looking at what it will take to move my existing fabrics to new switches.
My existing switches were provided through Hitachi Data Systems, which has not verified
any version of NX-OS beyond 5.0(8).

My primary question:
Will there be any compatibility issues in migrating the necessary information between the old and new switches?

Will I need to upgrade the 9124's to a newer version of NS-OX before I can migrate the configurations?
I assume a new 9148 will be using NS-OX 8.

The second question may or may not be appropriate for the forums, so if if not, please ignore it.

There is a tremendous difference in the cost of a 9148S that comes with twelve activated ports and twelve 16Gb SFP's when compared to the cost of the same switch without the SFP's.

The prices I've found for the 1st configuration (P/N:DS-C9148S-D12PSK9) are in the neighborhood of $6500.

The same switch without the SFP's (P/N: DS-C9148S-12PK9) can be found for about $2000.
The SFP's (P/N:DS-SFP-FC16G-SW) are about $140 apiece, or about $1900 for a dozen.
That's close to $1300 difference with no discernible difference between the two configurations.
Am I missing something here?

[Walter Dey]

see eg.

https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/13317981/replacing-mds9148-san-switches-mds9148s-looking-best-practices-replace

[GRANT GATHAGAN]

Thanks for the link, Walter

My biggest concern about the document is a statement on the page you reference:

Restore a switch configuration only to a switch with the same firmware version used to create the switch configuration.
If an upgrade is required, first restore the configuration then upgrade the firmware.

I also ran across this document that lists compatible/recommended versions of NX-OS for the various switch models:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/mds9000/sw/b_MDS_NX-OS_Recommended_Releases.html

The 9124 can only use 5.x of NX-OS
The 9148 can only use 6.x of NX-OS


All of that said, the document is a 10-year-old publication that discusses SAN-OS Release 3.1.
I would hope that NX-OS is a bit more advanced in this particular area.

[Walter Dey]

Hi Grant

Yes I know the document is very old; however I believe there is no updated version. FC is a old technology, and feature wise very static and conservative; yes, speed is getting increased. Compare this with Ethernet which is a very dynamic (new features) protocol.

Regarding MDS 9124:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/storage-networking/mds-9100-series-multilayer-fabric-switches/eol_C51-728917.html

Table 1. End-of-Life Milestones and Dates for the Cisco MDS 9124 Multilayer Fabric Switch

Milestone	Definition	Date
End-of-Life Announcement Date	The date the document that announces the end of sale and end of life of a product is distributed to the general public.	July 26, 2013

You cannot synch the version of 9124 and 9148. However version 6.x is backwards compatible to 5.x meaning that all features of 5.x will be supported on 6.x; the otherway around is of course not true.

I would run a test, and migrate the configuration of the 9124 to the 9148 ! 

Good luck !

Walter.