Cisco Nexus 5010, Nexus 5020, Nexus 5000 Series User Manual
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Product Overview
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series is a family of top-of-rack switches for the data center. The Cisco Nexus
5000 Series offers high-speed Ethernet switching and supports Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to
provide data center I/O consolidation (IOC).
The Nexus 5010 switch provides 20 fixed Ethernet ports in a 1 RU switch and the Nexus 5020 switch
provides 40 fixed Ethernet ports in a 2 RU switch. Optional expansion modules provide native Fibre
Channel ports and additional Ethernet ports.
This chapter describes the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches and includes the following sections:
• New Technologies in the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series, page 1-1
• Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Hardware, page 1-3
• Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Software, page 1-4
• Typical Deployment Topologies, page 1-7
• Supported Standards, page 1-10
New Technologies in the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches introduce several new technologies, which are described in the
following sections:
• Fibre Channel over Ethernet, page 1-1
• I/O Consolidation, page 1-2
• Virtual Interfaces, page 1-3
Fibre Channel over Ethernet
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) provides a method of encapsulating Fibre Channel traffic over a
physical Ethernet link. FCoE frames use a unique Ethertype so that FCoE traffic and standard Ethernet
traffic can be carried on the same link.
Fibre Channel traffic requires a lossless transport layer. Native Fibre Channel implements lossless
service using a buffer-to-buffer credit system. For FCoE traffic, the Ethernet link must provide lossless
service.
Ethernet links on Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches provide two mechanisms to ensure lossless transport
for FCoE traffic: link-level flow control and priority flow control.
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FCoE
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IP FC SAN
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IOC Switch
Server
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IEEE 802.3x link-level flow control allows a congested receiver to signal the far end to pause the data
transmission for a short period of time. The pause functionality is applied to all the traffic on the link.
The priority flow control (PFC) feature applies pause functionality to specific classes of traffic on the
Ethernet link. For example, PFC can provide lossless service for the FCoE traffic, and best-effort service
for the standard Ethernet traffic. PFC can provide different levels of service to specific classes of
Ethernet traffic (using IEEE 802.1p traffic classes).
I/O Consolidation
I/O consolidation (IOC) allows a single network technology to carry IP, SAN and IPC traffic.
FCoE enables an evolutionary approach to IOC. The upper Fibre Channel layers are unchanged, so the
Fibre Channel operational model is maintained. FCoE network management and configuration is similar
to a native Fibre Channel network.
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches use FCoE to carry Fibre Channel and Ethernet traffic on the same
physical Ethernet connection between the switch and the server. At the server, the connection terminates
to a converged network adapter (CNA) . The adapter presents two interfaces to the server’s operating
system (OS): one Ethernet NIC interface and one Fibre Channel HBA interface. The server OS is not
aware of the FCoE encapsulation (See Figure 1-1)
At the switch, the incoming Ethernet port separates the Ethernet and Fibre Channel traffic (using
Ethertype to differentiate the frames). Ethernet frames and Fibre Channel frames are switched to their
respective network-side interfaces.
Chapter 1 Product Overview
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches provide quality of service (QoS) capabilities to ensure lossless service
across the switch for Fibre Channel traffic. Best-effort service can be applied to all of the Ethernet traffic
or specific classes of Ethernet traffic can be configured with different QoS levels.
Figure 1-1 I/O Consolidation
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Virtual Interfaces
When FCoE is enabled, a physical Ethernet cable carries traffic for a logical Fibre Channel connection.
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch uses virtual interfaces to represent the logical Fibre Channel
connections. For configuration purposes, virtual Fibre Channel interfaces are implemented as Layer 2
subinterfaces of the physical Ethernet interface.
Ethernet features (such as link debounce timer and VLAN membership) are configured on the physical
Ethernet interface. Logical Fibre Channel features (such as VSAN membership) are configured on the
virtual Fibre Channel interfaces.
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Hardware
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series includes the Nexus 5010 and Nexus 5020 switches. The Cisco Nexus 5000
Series switch hardware is described in the following topics:
• Chassis, page 1-3
• Expansion Modules, page 1-3
• Ethernet Interfaces, page 1-3
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Hardware
• Fibre Channel Interfaces, page 1-4
• Management Interfaces, page 1-4
Chassis
The Nexus 5010 switch is a 1 RU chassis and the Nexus 5020 switch is a 2 RU chassis designed for rack
mounting. The chassis supports redundant fans and power supplies.
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switching fabric is low latency, nonblocking and supports Ethernet frame
sizes from 64 to 9216 bytes.
Expansion Modules
The Nexus 5010 switch has one slot and the Nexus 5020 switch has two slots for optional expansion
modules. The following expansion modules are available:
• N5K-M1404 provides four 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports, and four 1/2/4 Gb Fibre Channel ports.
• N5K-M1600 provides six 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports.
• N5K-M1008 provides eight 1/2/4 Gb Fibre Channel ports.
The expansion modules are field-replaceable units (FRUs) that support online insertion and removal
(OIR).
Ethernet Interfaces
The Nexus 5010 switch has 20 fixed 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports equipped with SFP+ interface adapters.
The first 8 ports are switchable 1-Gigabit/10-Gigabit ports. Up to 6 additional 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports
are available on an expansion module.
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