CHAPT ER
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Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Hardware Installation Guide
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Using a Fabric Extender with a Cisco Nexus 5000 Series or Cisco Nexus 6000 Series Switch
This chapter describes the Cisco Nexus Fabric Extenders (FEXs) and includes these sections:
•Information About Using a Fabric Extender with a Cisco Nexus Switch, page1-1
•Cisco Nexus 2300 Series, page1-1
•Cisco Nexus 2248TP-E, page1-10
•Cisco Nexus 2248TP, page1-17
•Cisco Nexus 2248PQ, page1-24
•Cisco Nexus 2232TM-10GE, Cisco Nexus N2K-C2232TM-E-10GE, page1-27
•Cisco Nexus 2224TP, page1-32
•Cisco Nexus 2148T, page1-36

Information About Using a Fabric Extender with a Cisco Nexus

Switch

The Cisco Nexus Fabric Extenders (FEXs) support Gigabit Ethernet and 10-Gigabit Ethernet
environments while allowing transparent migration to 10-Gigabit Ethernet virtual machine aware unified
fabric technologies. The Cisco Nexus FEXs behave as remote I/O modules for a parent Cisco Nexus
switch. The FEX is an extension of the parent Cisco Nexus switch fabric, with the FEX and the parent
Cisco Nexus switch together forming a virtual modular system.
A Cisco Nexus FEX forwards all the traffic to the parent Cisco Nexus Switch over 10-Gigabit Ethernet
uplinks. Passing all traffic to the parent switch allows traffic to be shaped according to policies
established on the parent Cisco Nexus switch with a single point of management.

Cisco Nexus 2300 Series

The Cisco Nexus 2300 Series FEXs are stackable, hardware capable, 1 RU FEXs that support 48 1/10G
host ports as well as up to 6 40G uplink ports towards the parent switch. The 40G uplinks support bi-di
optics for seamlessly connectivity. The platform has a deep 32MB shared buffer for increased
performance.