Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches Product Overview

Today’s data centers are increasingly filled with dense rack-mount and blade servers that host powerful multicore processors. The rapid increase in in-rack computing density and the increasing use of virtualization software combine to accelerate the demand for 10 Gigabit Ethernet and consolidated I/O: applications for which the Cisco Nexus® 5000 Series Switches are an excellent match. With low latency and choice of front-to-back or back-to-front cooling, copper or fiber access ports, and rear-facing data ports, the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series is designed for a broad range of physical, virtual, storage access, and high-performance computing environments, thus giving customers the flexibility to meet and scale their data center requirements in a gradual manner and at a pace that aligns with their business objectives.

The switch series, using cut-through architecture, supports line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet on all ports while maintaining consistently low latency independent of packet size and services enabled. It supports a set of network technologies known collectively as Data Center Bridging (DCB) that increases the reliability, efficiency, and scalability of Ethernet networks. These features allow the switches to support multiple traffic classes over a lossless Ethernet fabric, thus enabling consolidation of LAN, SAN, and cluster environments. Its ability to connect Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to native Fibre Channel protects existing storage system investments while dramatically simplifying in-rack cabling.

In addition to supporting standard 10 Gigabit Ethernet network interface cards (NICs) on servers, the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series integrates with multifunction adapters called converged network adapters (CNAs) that combine the functions of Ethernet NICs and Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), making the transition to a single, unified network fabric transparent and consistent with existing practices, management software, and OS drivers. The switch series is compatible with integrated transceivers and Twinax cabling solutions that deliver cost-effective connectivity for 10 Gigabit Ethernet to servers at the rack level, eliminating the need for expensive optical transceivers. The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series portfolio also provides the flexibility to connect directly to servers using 10GBASE-T connections or fiber with Enhanced Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP+) transceivers.

The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series is designed for data center environments with cut-through technology that enables consistent low-latency Ethernet solutions, with front-to-back or back-to-front cooling, and with data ports in the rear, bringing switching into close proximity with servers and making cable runs short and simple. The switch series is highly serviceable, with redundant, hot-pluggable power supplies and fan modules. It uses data center-class Cisco® NX-OS Software for high reliability and ease of management.

Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform Overview

In a constantly changing business environment, companies are calling upon their IT departments to help them reduce costs, improve productivity, and introduce new ways to interact with their customer base.

The Cisco Nexus 5500 platform extends the industry-leading versatility of the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series purpose-built 10 Gigabit Ethernet data center-class switches and provides innovative advances toward higher density, lower latency, and multilayer services. The Cisco Nexus 5500 platform is well suited for enterprise-class data center server access-layer deployments across a diverse set of physical, virtual, storage-access, and high‑performance computing (HPC) data center environments.



Cisco Nexus 5596T Switch

The Cisco Nexus 5596T Switch is a 2RU form factor, with 32 fixed ports of 10G BASE-T and 16 fixed ports of SFP+. The switch also supports up to three expansion slots. The switch supports 10 Gigabit Ethernet (fiber and copper), Fibre Channel, and FCoE, offering up to 1920 Gbps of throughput and up to 96 ports. The switch supports unified ports on all SFP+ ports. The 10G BASE-T ports support FCoE up to 30m distance with Category 6a and Category 7 cables.  Cisco Nexus 5596T: 32 fixed ports of 1 and 10G BASE-T and 16 SFP+ fixed ports configurable as 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE or 8/4/2/1-Gbps native Fibre Channel; additional interfaces through up to three expansion modules


 Layer 2 switch ports and VLAN trunks

- IEEE 802.1Q VLAN encapsulation
- Support for up to 4096 VLANs
- Rapid Per-VLAN Spanning Tree Plus (PVRST+) (IEEE 802.1w compatible)
- Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP) (IEEE 802.1s): 64 instances
- Spanning Tree PortFast
- Spanning Tree root guard
- Spanning Tree Bridge Assurance
- Cisco EtherChannel technology (up to 16 ports per EtherChannel)
- Cisco vPC technology
- Enhanced vPC enable vPC between Cisco Nexus 5000 and 2000 Series as well as between Cisco Nexus 3000 Series and end host
- vPC configuration synchronization
- Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP): IEEE 802.3ad
- Advanced port channel hashing based on Layer 2, 3, and 4 information
- Jumbo frames on all ports (up to 9216 bytes)
- Pause frames (IEEE 802.3x)
- Storm control (unicast, multicast, and broadcast)
- Private VLANs
- Private VLAN over trunks (isolated and promiscuous)
- Private VLANs over vPC and EtherChannels
- VLAN Remapping
- Cisco FabricPath
- EvPC and vPC+ with FabricPath
- Cisco Adapter FEX
- Cisco Data Center VM FEX
- Support for up to 24 fabric extenders on each Cisco Nexus 5500 platform

Layer 3 Features

- Layer 3 interfaces: Routed ports on Cisco Nexus 5500 platform interfaces, switch virtual interface (SVI), port channels, subinterfaces, and port channel subinterfaces for a total of 4096 entries
- Support for up to 8000 prefixes and up to 16000 IPv4 and 8000 IPv6 host entries
- Support for up to 8000 multicast routes
- Support for up to 8000 IGMP groups
- Support for 1000 VRF entries
- Support for up to 4096 VLANs
- 16-way equal-cost multipathing (ECMP)
- 1664 ingress and 2048 egress access control list (ACL) entries
- Routing protocols: Static, Routing Information Protocol Version2 (RIPv2), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Open Shortest Path First Version 2 (OSPFv2), and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
- IPv6 Routing Protocols: Static, Open Shortest Path First Version 3 (OPFv3), Border Gateway Protocol (BGPv6), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRPv6)
- IPv6 VRF Lite
- Hot-Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) and Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP)
- ACL: Routed ACL with Layer 3 and 4 options to match ingress and egress ACL
- Multicast: Protocol Independent Multicast Version 2 (PIMv2) sparse mode, Source Specific Multicast (SSM), Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP), Internet Group Management Protocol Versions 2, and 3 (IGMP v2, and v3), and Multicast VLAN Registration (MVR)
- Virtual Route Forwarding (VRF): VRF-lite (IP VPN); VRF-aware unicast; and BGP-, OSPF-, RIP-, and VRF-aware multicast
- Unicast Reverse Path Forwarding (uRFP) with ACL; strict and loose modes
- Jumbo frame support (up to 9216 bytes)
- Support for up to 16 fabric extender on each Nexus 5500 with L3 modules
- RFC 896

QoS

- Layer 2 IEEE 802.1p (CoS)
- 8 hardware queues per port
- Per-port QoS configuration
- CoS trust
- Port-based CoS assignment
- Modular QoS CLI (MQC) compliance - IPv4 and IPv6
- ACL-based QoS classification (Layers 2, 3, and 4)
- MQC CoS marking
- Per-port virtual output queuing
- CoS-based egress queuing
- Egress strict-priority queuing
- Egress port-based scheduling: Weighted Round-Robin (WRR)
- Control Plan Policing (CoPP) - IPv4 and IPv6


Security

- Ingress ACLs (standard and extended) on Ethernet and virtual Ethernet ports
- Standard and extended Layer 2 ACLs: MAC addresses, protocol type, etc.
- Standard and extended Layer 3 to 4 ACLs: IPv4 and IPv6, Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP and ICMPv6), TCP, User Datagram Protocol (UDP), etc.
- VLAN-based ACLs (VACLs)
- Port-based ACLs (PACLs)
- Named ACLs
- Optimized ACL distribution
- ACLs on virtual terminals (VTYs)
- ACL logging on management interface
- Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) snooping with Option 82
- Dynamic Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) Inspection
- IP source guard
- DHCP relay
- Cisco CTS (Authentication and Policy download from ACS)
- Ethernet Port Security
- IPv6 RACL
- IPv6 PACL
- IPv6 VACL



switch# show version
Cisco Nexus Operating System (NX-OS) Softwar

Copyright (c) 2002-2013, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
The copyrights to certain works contained herein are owned by
other third parties and are used and distributed under license.
Some parts of this software are covered under the GNU Public
License.
Software
  BIOS:      version 3.6.0
  loader:    version N/A
  kickstart: version 6.0(2)N1(2)
  system:    version 6.0(2)N1(2)
  Power Sequencer Firmware:
             Module 1: version v1.0
  Microcontroller Firmware:        version v1.0.0.2
  SFP uC:    Module 1: v1.1.0.0
  QSFP uC:   Module not detected
  BIOS compile time:       05/09/2012
  kickstart image file is: bootflash:///n5000-uk9-kickstart.6.0.2.N1.2.
  kickstart compile time:  3/14/2013 1:00:00 [03/14/2013 08:53:55]
  system image file is:    bootflash:///n5000-uk9.6.0.2.N1.2.
  system compile time:     3/14/2013 1:00:00 [03/14/2013 11:28:50]


Hardware
  cisco Nexus 5596 Chassis ("O2 32X10GBase-T + 16X10GE/Modular Supervisor")
  Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU         with 8262944 kB of memory.
  Processor Board ID FOC17101TZ3

  Device name: switch
  bootflash:    2007040 kB

Kernel uptime is 0 day(s), 0 hour(s), 11 minute(s), 58 second(s)

Last reset
  Reason: Unknown
  System version: 6.0(2)N1(2)
  Service:

plugin
  Core Plugin, Ethernet Plugins.

N5k-F20# show license usage 

Feature                      Ins  Lic   Status Expiry Date Comments

                                 Count

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FCOE_NPV_PKG                  No    -   Unused             -

FM_SERVER_PKG                 No    -   Unused             -

ENTERPRISE_PKG                No    -   Unused             -

FC_FEATURES_PKG               No    -   Unused             -

VMFEX_FEATURE_PKG             No    -   Unused             -

ENHANCED_LAYER2_PKG           Yes    -  In use Never            -

LAN_BASE_SERVICES_PKG         Yes   -   In use Never       -

LAN_ENTERPRISE_SERVICES_PKG   Yes    -  In use Never       -

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------