Being the biggest networking player in the field, Cisco tends to aim for large campus and datacenter environments when designing their products. Cisco ASIC processors are proven technology and put into production in big production networks.
When you talk about datacenter switches, you should instantly react by thinking the Cisco Nexus product line. They were first introduced in 2008. The Nexus family was designed for datacenter use. With the introduction of the Nexus switches, a new software was being developed named NX-OS (Nexus OS). All Nexus switches run NX-OS instead of IOS. This platform is in fact optimized for 10Gbit, high density networks.
The Nexus platform is all about high density, simplification and unified fabric. With the fabric extender technology you lower the amount of control points in your datacenter network. With FCoE, you create one unified fabric thus lowering cabling cost and adding better cooling and power performance. Cisco is really lowering energy and management costs with this solution.
The complete product line consists of :
- Nexus 5000 series
- Nexus 7000 series
- Nexus 2000 series Fabric Extenders
- Nexus 3000 and 4000 series
- Nexus 1000v series
Nexus 7000 series
The Nexus 7000 series is the flagship among datacenter core switches. It’s a modular switch like the classic Catalyst 6000 series. The switch itself has server different models, according to the slots and troughput you need in the chassis :
Nexus 7004
- 4 slots: 3-4 are line card slots, 1-2 are supervisor slots
- 7 RU hight
- Supports 96 10Gbit/s and/or 1Gbit/s, all non-blocking ports
- 1.92 Tbit/s system bandwidth
- 480 Gbit/s, 720Mpps per slot
- Air flow is side to rear (input on right right)
- The chassis does not have fabric modules, the I/O modules connect directly through the backplane
- Up to 4 power supplies
Nexus 7009
- 9 slots: 3-9 are line card slots, 1-2 are supervisor slots
- 14 RU hight
- Supports 336 10Gbit/s and/or 1Gbit/s, all non-blocking ports
- 8.8 Tbit/s system bandwidth
- 480 Gbit/s, 720Mpps per slot
- Air flow is side to side (right to left)
- Up to 5 Crossbar Fabric Modules
- Up to 2 power supplies
Nexus 7010
- 10 slots: 1-4 and 7-10 are line card slots, 5-6 are supervisor slots
- 21 RU hight
- Supports 384 10Gbit/s, and/or 1Gbit/s ports, all non-blocking ports
- 9.9 Tbit/s system bandwidth
- 480 Gbit/s, 720Mpps per slot
- Air flow is front to back, bottom to top
- Up to 5 Crossbar Fabric Modules
- Up to 3 power supplies
Nexus 7018
- 18 slots: 1-8 and 11-18 are line card slots, 9-10 are supervisor slots
- 25 RU hight
- Supports 768 10Gbit/s and/or 1Gbit/s, all non-blocking ports
- 17.6 Tbit/s system bandwidth
- 480 Gbit/s, 720Mpps per slot
- Air flow is side to side (right to left)
- Up to 5 Crossbar Fabric Modules
- Up to 4 power supplies
Nexus 5000 series
The Nexus 5000 series has 5 different models offering 10Gbit ethernet and FCoE (Fibrechannel over Ethernet) to the datacenter. Commonly they are used in combination with Nexus 2000 Fabric Extenders in order to provide high density solutions for classic Ethernet ports.
- Nexus 5010: one rack-unit high switch with 20 fixed 10Gbit/s supporting ethernet, FCoE and DCB interfaces and one expansion port offering one of the modules
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- 8 ports with 1, 2 or 4 Gbps FC
- 6 ports with 1, 2, 4 or 8 Gbps FC
- 4 ports with 10Gb FCoE or DCB and 4 ports offering 1, 2 or 4 Gbps FC
- 6 ports offering 10Gb FCoE or DCB
- Nexus 5020: two rack-unit high switch with 40 fixed 10Gbit/s supporting ethernet, FCoE and DCB and two expansion ports each offering one of the modules
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- 8 ports with 1, 2 or 4 Gbps FC
- 6 ports with 1, 2, 4 or 8 Gbps FC
- 4 ports with 10Gb FCoE or DCB and 4 ports offering 1, 2 or 4 Gbps FC
- 6 ports offering 10Gb FCoE or DCB
- Nexus 5548P switch: 1U chassis with 32 fixed non-unified ports and up to 16 additional ports using the expansion slot. The 5548 chassis can be the main fabric for the Nexus 2000 series fabric extenders. The interfaces in the expansion slots are:
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- 16 port unified offering 1-10 Gbps SFP+ slot for ethernet and FCoE OR 1,2,4 or 8 native fibre channel
- 16 port SFP+ 10Gbps ethernet and FCoE
- 8 ports SFP+ 10Gbps ethernet and FCoE plus 8 ports 1,2,4 or 8 native fibre-channel.
- Nexus 5548UP: also a 1U chassis with 32 fixed unified ports and up to 16 additional ports using the expansion slot. The difference between the 5548P and 5548UP is that the 5548P’s fixed (on-board) SFP+ slots are non-unified there where the same SFP+ slots on the UP chassis are unified.
- Nexus 5596UP: a two-RU chassis with 48 fixed unified ports and up to 48 additional interfaces in three expansion slots. Capabilities of the 5596UP is same as the 5548UP but this switch is two RU high and supports two expansion slots
Nexus 2000 series
Nexus 2000 series, also known as Fabric Extenders (FEX) are in fact no intelligent switches. They merely serve as a extended fabric for a Nexus 5000 of 7000 series switch. One could say these are UTP/RJ45 line cards which are extended out of a Nexus 5000 or 7000 switch. They offer 100Mbit/1Gbit/10Gbit or FCoE interfaces on copper ports. Be aware that you need FET tranceivers in the Nexus switches in order to extend the fabric.
Nexus 3000/4000 series
The Nexus 3000 series switch is a 40Gbit switch capable with Layer3 functionality. It’s a Nexus for the niche market, as it’s a low-latency switch and has a different feature set than the Nexus 5000 series.
The Nexus 4000 series is a switch built to implement in IBM based bladecenters. It acts as a fabric extender and lowers the management points in your datacenter. It has been replaced by the B22 Fabric Extender
Nexus 1000V series
The Nexus 1000v replaces the VMware distributed switch. It’s a virtual switch to be used in ESX/ESXi environments. In fact it’s a complete NX-OS virtualized so you can log on to it and configure it as if it were a real physical switch. Features like LACP, QoS, Netflow and many more are supported and configurable on the first L2 device connecting the virtual environment to the physical.
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