Cisco Systems UCSFI6248E1628P manual Product Overview, Unified Fabric with FCoE I/O Consolidation

Product Overview

The Cisco UCS 6200 Series Fabric Interconnects are a core part of the Cisco Unified Computing System, providing both network connectivity and management capabilities for the system (Figure 2). The Cisco UCS 6200 Series offers line-rate, low-latency, lossless 10 Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and Fibre Channel functions.

The Cisco UCS 6200 Series provides the management and communication backbone for the Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers and 5100 Series Blade Server Chassis. All chassis, and therefore all blades, attached to the Cisco UCS 6200 Series Fabric Interconnects become part of a single, highly available management domain. In addition, by supporting unified fabric, the Cisco UCS 6200 Series provides both the LAN and SAN connectivity for all blades within its domain.

From a networking perspective, the Cisco UCS 6200 Series uses a cut-through architecture, supporting deterministic, low-latency, line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet on all ports, switching capacity of 2 terabits (Tb), and

320-Gbps bandwidth per chassis, independent of packet size and enabled services. The product family supports Cisco® low-latency, lossless 10 Gigabit Ethernet1 unified network fabric capabilities, which increase the reliability, efficiency, and scalability of Ethernet networks. The fabric interconnect supports multiple traffic classes over a lossless Ethernet fabric from the blade through the interconnect. Significant TCO savings come from an FCoE-optimized server design in which network interface cards (NICs), host bus adapters (HBAs), cables, and switches can be consolidated.

Figure 2. Cisco UCS 6200 Series Fabric Interconnects

Unified Fabric with FCoE: I/O Consolidation

The Cisco UCS 6200 Series is built to consolidate LAN and SAN traffic onto a single unified fabric, saving the capital expenditures (CapEx) and operating expenses (OpEx) associated with multiple parallel networks, different types of adapter cards, switching infrastructure, and cabling within racks. The unified ports support allows either base or expansion module ports in the interconnect to support direct connections from Cisco UCS to existing native Fibre Channel SANs. The capability to connect FCoE to native Fibre Channel protects existing storage system investments while dramatically simplifying in-rack cabling.

1All Cisco UCS 6200 Series ports can alternatively be configured for 1 Gigabit Ethernet (see Table 2).

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