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Cisco Nexus switches

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The Cisco Nexus Series switches are modular network switches designed for the data center. Cisco Systems introduced the Nexus Series of switches on January 28, 2008. The first chassis in the Nexus 7000 family is a 10-slot chassis with two supervisor engine slots and eight I/O module slots at the front, as well as five crossbar switch fabric modules at the rear. Beside the Nexus 7000 there are also other models in the Nexus range.

The Nexus switching range

The Nexus 7000 is the high-end model in the Nexus range of datacenter switches. Other models are:[1]

Nexus 1000v

The 1000v is a virtual switch for use in VMWare environments. It is as such not a physical box but a software application that interacts with VMWare products so you can virtualize the networking environment and be able to configure your VMware vSphere ESX and ESXi system as if all virtual servers have connections to a physical switch and include the capabilities that a switch offers such as multiple VLAN's per virtual interface, layer-3 options, security features etc. [2][3]

Nexus 2000

The Nexus 2000 series are fabric extenders: 'top of rack' 1U high system that can be used in combination with higer end Nexus switches like the 5000 or 7000 series: the 2000 series is not a 'stand-alone' switch but needs to be connected to a parent and should be seen as a 'module' or 'remote line card' but then installed in a 19" rack in stead of in a main switch-enclosure. The interconnection between this 'remote line card' and the 5000 or 7000 parent switch uses the propriety interfaces: CX-1 for copper or the short or long range Cisco Fabric Extender Tranceiver or FET interfaces. In combination with the 5000/7000 mother-switch you can create a so called Distributed Modular System.

The 2000 series consists of 4 different models: Three models offer 24 or 48 gigabit only or gigabit/fastethernet copper interfaces and up to 4 10 Gigabit uplink interfaces on copper or fibre. The Nexus 2232P offers thirty-two one Gigabit and ten 10 Gbpsethernet and FCoE interfaces.[4]

Nexus 3000

The model 3064 is currently the only Nexus switch in the 3000-series being a 1U rack-switch with 1, 10 and 40 Gb ethernet interfaces that is designed for use in colo center. Offers layer2 and layer3 capabilities at wire-speed for all 64 interfaces running in 10Gbps. Layer3 routing protocols supported include static routes, RIP v2, OSPF and BGP-4.The switch-fabric can switch 1,28 Tbps and forward up to 950 million packets per second. The switch is capable of building a route-table with up to 16000 prefixes, 8000 host-entries and 4000 multicast routes and up to 4096 VLAN's are supported. On top of that a high number of ingress or egress ACL's can be configured.

The 3064 has two replacable power-supplies on board and two seperate out of band management interfaces. To connect the 3064 to the rest of the network the use of propriety EtherChannel or Lin affregation using industry-standard LACP or IEEE 802.3ad is supported with up to 32 port-channels with each up to 16 physcial interfaces.

The switch holds of 48 SFP+[5] for 1Gb or 10Gb ethernet interfaces and four QSFP+[6] each handling 4 x 10Gb interfaces allowing for 40Gbps over a single fibre-pair[7]

Nexus 4000

The Nexus 4000 series consists of only the model 4001: a blade-switch module for IBM BladeCenter that has all 10 Gbit Fibre Channel over Ethernet switch[8]

Nexus 5000

The Nexus 5000 series: a range of 5 models 1U or 2U rack-switches offering 20-96 1 and 10Gb ethernet and 10 Gb FCoE interfaces. Can be used with the above mentioned Nexus 2000 series fabric extender. The 5000-series offer carrier-grade layer2 and layer3 switching as well as the mentioned FCoE capabilities[9]

The Nexus 7000 series

The Cisco Nexus Series runs the NX-OS operating system. The switch is designed to deliver high availability for data center class switching. This platform is optimized for high-density 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

The current offering of the Nexus 7000 chassis now includes a 18 slot chassis (2 for the supervisor engines + 16 modules); this allows for 512 10GE connections (128 at line rate).[10]

Chassis capabilities

7010

  • 10-Slots: 1-4 and 7-10 are line card slots, 5-6 are supervisory slots[11]
  • Supports 256 10Gbps, and/or 384 1Gbps ports
  • 1.2 Tb/s system bandwidth, future proof to 15+ Tb/s
  • 80 Gbps, 60Mpps per slot
  • Air flow is front to back, bottom to top
  • Up to 5 Crossbar Fabric Modules
  • Up to 3 power supplies

7018

  • 18-Slots: 1-8 and 11-18 are line card slots, 9-10 are supervisory slots
  • Supports 512 10Gbps, 768 1Gbps, and 128 non-blocking 10Gbps ports
  • 7.8 Tb/s system bandwidth, future proof to 17.6Tb/s
  • 256Gbps, 192Mpps per slot
  • Air flow is side to side
  • Up to 5 Crossbar Fabric Modules
  • Up to 4 power supplies

References

  1. ^ Cisco product overview Datacenter switches: Nexus, visted 28 May, 2011
  2. ^ Cisco brochure Cisco1000v Virtual Switch, PDF, retrieved 28 May, 2011
  3. ^ Overview of the Nexus 1000v virtual switch, visited 28 May, 2011
  4. ^ Cisco brochure Nexus 2000,PDF, retrieved 28 May, 2011
  5. ^ Cisco documentation on Cisco 10 Gigabit modules, visited 28 May 2011
  6. ^ Cisco documentation on Cisco 40 Gigabit modules, visited 28 May 2011
  7. ^ Cisco brochure ,Nexus 3000, PDF, retrieved 28 May, 2011
  8. ^ Cisco brochure ,Nexus 4001, PDF, retrieved 28 May, 2011
  9. ^ Cisco brochure ,Nexus 5000 series, PDF, retrieved 28 May, 2011
  10. ^ Cisco Nexus 7000 Series 32-Port 10Gb Ethernet Module, 80Gb Fabric data sheet
  11. ^ Nexus – 7000 Hardware
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