Cisco Systems N5KC5548UPFA, N55M4Q manual Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform Switches, A P T E R

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C H A P T E R 1

Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches, which include the Cisco Nexus 5000 Platform switches and the Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform switches. The overview of each of these switches includes information on the expansion modules, power supplies, and fan modules that you can include with them.

This chapter includes the following sections:

•Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform Switches, page 1-1

•Cisco Nexus 5000 Platform Switches, page 1-29

Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform Switches

The Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform supports the following application scenarios, many of which require the installation of other products:

•As an access-layer switch, it can be used purely as a 1- and 10-Gigabit Ethernet switch, consolidating 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections into a smaller number of server connections trunked to the aggregation layer.

•As a smaller-scale aggregation switch, it can be used as a Layer 3 1- and 10-Gigabit Ethernet switch, consolidating multiple 1- and 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections from a data center access layer.

•In conjunction with the Cisco Nexus 2248T GE Ethernet Fabric Extender, the Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform can be a high-density 1-Gigabit Ethernet switching system, consolidating more than 900 Gigabit Ethernet connections within a single management plane.

•In conjunction with the Cisco Nexus 2232T 10GE Fabric Extender, it can be a high-density switching system, consolidating more than 600 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections within a single management plane.

•In conjunction with the Cisco Nexus 2224TM 10GE Fabric Extender, it can be a high-density switching system, consolidating more than 600 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections within a single management plane

•As a rack-level I/O consolidation platform, the switch carries Ethernet traffic from servers to the aggregation layer and carries FC traffic to existing Fibre Channel SANs.

•As a crucial element in data center I/O consolidation, the switch enables I/O consolidation at the access layer and provides interoperability with the Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform and other standards-based products.

This section describes the Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform switches and contains these sections:

•Cisco Nexus 5596UP Switch, page 1-2

Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Hardware Installation Guide

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