Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches
Get top-of-rack, Layer 2 and 3 switching

Cisco Nexus 3100 Series Switch:

The Nexus 3100 switches are the second-generation Cisco Nexus 3000 series switches and offer improved port density, scalability, and features compared to the first-generation switches. The Cisco Nexus 31128PQ comes in a compact two-rack-unit (2RU) form factor and runs the industry-leading Cisco NX-OS Software operating system, providing customers comprehensive features and functions that are widely deployed. It supports both forward and reverse (port side exhaust and port side intake) airflow schemes with AC and DC power inputs. The Cisco Nexus 31128PQ is well suited for data centers that require a cost-effective, power-efficient line-rate Layer 2 and 3 access or leaf switch.

Main benefits

The Cisco Nexus 3100 provides the following main benefits:

• Wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching on all ports
  • Layer 2 and 3 switching of up to 2.5 Terabits per second (Tbps) and up to 1.4 Billion packets per second (bpps) is provided in a compact 2RU form-factor switch.
• High availability
  • Virtual PortChannel (vPC) technology provides Layer 2 multipathing through the elimination of Spanning Tree Protocol and enables fully utilized bisectional bandwidth and simplified Layer 2 logical topologies without the need to change the existing management and deployment models.
  • The 64-way Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP) routing enables the use of Layer 3 fat-tree designs and allows organizations to prevent network bottlenecks, increase resiliency, and add capacity with little network disruption.
  • Hot swappable Power-Supply Units (PSUs) and fans.
• High Performance
  • The Cisco Nexus 31128PQ delivers low nominal latency, which enables customers to implement high-performance infrastructure for High-Frequency Trading (HFT) and High-Performance Computing (HPC) workloads.
• Purpose-built Cisco NX-OS operating system with comprehensive, proven innovations
  • PowerOn Auto Provisioning (POAP) enables touchless bootup and configuration of the switch, drastically reducing provisioning time.
  • Cisco Embedded Event Manager (EEM) and Python scripting enable automation and remote operations in the data center.
  • Advanced buffer monitoring reports real-time buffer utilization per port and per queue, which allows organizations to monitor traffic bursts and application traffic patterns.
  • Ethanalyzer is a built-in packet analyzer for monitoring and troubleshooting control-plane traffic and is based on the popular Wireshark open source network protocol analyzer.
  • Precision Time Protocol (PTP; IEEE 1588) provides accurate clock synchronization and improved data correlation with network captures and system events.
  • Complete Layer 3 unicast and multicast routing protocol suites are supported, including Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Routing Information Protocol Version 2 (RIPv2), Protocol Independent Multicast Sparse Mode (PIM-SM), Source-Specific Multicast (SSM), and Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP).

Specifications

Documentation:

Download the Cisco Nexus 31128PQ Switch Datasheet (PDF).

Download the Cisco Nexus 3172PQ, 3172TQ, 3172TQ-32T, 3172PQ-XL, and 3172TQ-XL Switches Datasheet (PDF).

Cisco Nexus 3100-V Series Switch:

The Cisco Nexus 3100-V switch platform is the latest addition to the industry’s widely deployed Cisco Nexus 3100 platform. The Cisco Nexus 3100-V platform consists of high-density, low-power-consumption, and low-latency fixed-configuration data center switches with line-rate Layer 2 and 3 features that support enterprise applications, service provider hosting, High-Performance Computing (HPC), and cloud computing environments. These switches support a wide range of port speeds with flexible combinations of 1/10/40/100-Gbps connectivity with improved port density and scalability in compact 1-Rack-Unit (1RU) form factors.

The Cisco Nexus 3100-V platform runs the industry-leading Cisco® NX-OS Software operating system, which helps ensure continuous availability and sets the standard for mission-critical data center environments. The platform is designed for programmable fabric, which offers flexibility, mobility, and scalability for service providers and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and cloud providers; and for programmable networks, which automate configuration and management for customers who want to take advantage of the DevOps operating model and tool sets. It is well suited for data centers that require cost-effective, power-efficient, line-rate Layer 2 and 3 Top-of-Rack (ToR) switches. These switches also support forward and reverse airflow (port-side exhaust and port-side intake) schemes with AC and DC power inputs.

Features and Benefits

The Cisco Nexus 3100-V platform provides following benefits:

• High performance and scalability
  • The Cisco Nexus 3100-V platform provides wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching of up to 2.56 Terabits per second (Tbps) and up to 1.4 billion packets per second (bpps) on all ports.
  • The Cisco Nexus 3100-V platform delivers ultra-low nominal latency (approximately 650 nanoseconds [ns]), which allows customers to implement high performance infrastructure for High-Frequency-Trading (HFT) workloads.
• Line-rate Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) routing
  • VXLAN is designed to provide the same Ethernet Layer 2 network services as VLAN does today, but with greater extensibility and flexibility.
  • The Cisco Nexus 3100-V platform offers native line-rate VXLAN routing.
  • The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EVPN) control plane provides scalable multitenancy and host mobility (for more information, refer to the document "VXLAN Network with MP-BGP EVPN Control Plane.
• Enhanced buffer for applications
  • The Cisco Nexus 3100-V platform offers 16 MB of shared buffer space. In today's data center, application teams require the network to be flexible and capable of handling the rapid growth of applications. The Cisco Nexus 3100-V platform provides deep shared buffers (16 MB) to absorb bursts of traffic and a wide variety of applications, such as multicast feeds, voice traffic, video traffic, and healthcare applications.
  • These deep buffers also provide flexibility to expand your network as your needs change. The shared buffers are also instrumental in situations in which one or more servers are consuming most of the bandwidth in highly oversubscribed environments.
• Higher ingress Access Control List (ACL) entries
  • The Cisco Nexus 3100-V platform offer 16,000 ACL entries and 1000 egress ACL entries.
  • The increased number of ingress ACL entries can be especially useful in today's data centers, particularly in virtualized environments.
• High availability
  • Virtual-Port-Channel (vPC) technology provides Layer 2 multipathing through the elimination of Spanning Tree Protocol. It also enables fully utilized bisectional bandwidth and simplified Layer 2 logical topologies without the need to change the existing management and deployment models.
  • The 64-way Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP) routing enables the use of Layer 3 fat-tree designs and allows organizations to prevent network bottlenecks, increase resiliency, and add capacity with little network disruption.
  • Advanced reboot capabilities[2] are included through In Service Software Upgrade (ISSU) and Fast Reboot capabilities.
  • Power-Supply Units (PSUs) and fans are hot swappable.
• Purpose-built on the NX-OS operating system with comprehensive, proven innovations
  • Power-on Auto Provisioning (POAP) enables touchless bootup and configuration of the switch, drastically reducing provisioning time.
  • Cisco Embedded Event Manager (EEM) and Python scripting enable automation and remote operations in the data center.
  • Advanced buffer monitoring reports real-time buffer use per port and per queue, which allows organizations to monitor traffic bursts and application traffic patterns.
  • Ethanalyzer is a built-in packet analyzer for monitoring and troubleshooting control-plane traffic and is based on the popular Wireshark open-source network protocol analyzer.
  • Precision Time Protocol (PTP; IEEE 1588) provides accurate clock synchronization and improved data correlation with network captures and system events.
  • Complete Layer 3 unicast and multicast routing protocol suites are supported, including Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Routing Information Protocol Version 2 (RIPv2), Protocol-Independent Multicast sparse mode (PIM-SM), Source-Specific Multicast (SSM), and Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP).
• Network traffic monitoring with Cisco Nexus Data Broker ◦ Build simple, scalable and cost-effective network test access point (TAP) or Cisco Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) aggregation for network traffic monitoring and analysis.

Specifications

Documentation:

Download the Cisco Nexus 3100-V Platform Switches Datasheet (PDF).

Cisco Nexus 3100-Z Series Switch:

The Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z is the 32-port 100-Gbps programmable architecture switch, enabled with major data center features designed for software-defined data centers. This 1-Rack-Unit (1RU) model offers wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching.

The Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z is a Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable (QSFP) switch with 32 QSFP28 ports. Each QSFP28 port can operate at 10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 Gbps, up to a maximum of 128 x 25-Gbps ports.

It is a member of the Cisco Nexus 3100 platform and runs the industry-leading Cisco® NX-OS Software operating system, providing customers with comprehensive features and functions that are widely deployed. The Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z supports both forward and reverse (port-side exhaust and port-side intake) airflow schemes with AC and DC power inputs.

The Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z has the following hardware configuration:

• 32 fixed 100-Gigabit Ethernet QSFP28 ports
• Beacon LED
• Environment LED
• Status LED
• Four lane-selected LEDs
• Dual redundant power supplies
• Redundant (3+1) fans
• Two 10-Gbps SFP ports
• One RJ45 console port
• One RJ45 and SFP management port
• One USB port

Main benefits

The Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z provides the following:

• Data center feature richness that supports full IPv4 and IPv6 routing; Virtual Extensible LAN (VxLAN); and hardware-based encapsulation, including Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS), Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE), and Q-in-Q tunneling
• Wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching on all ports,2 with up to 6.4 Terabits per second (Tbps) and up to 2 billion packets per second (bpps)
• Robust programmability, with support for Cisco NX-API, Linux containers, XML and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) APIs, the OpenStack plug-in, Python, and Puppet and Chef configuration and automation tools
• High performance and scalability with a four-core CPU, 16 GB of DRAM, and 32 Mb of dynamic buffer allocation, making the switch excellent for massively scalable data centers and big data application
• Flexibility
  • The QSFP28 port can be configured to work as 4 x 25-Gbps ports, offering deployment flexibility, with up to a maximum of 128 x 25-Gbps ports.
  • Both fiber and copper cabling solutions are available for 10-, 25-, 40-, 50-, and 100-Gbps connectivity, including Active Optical Cable (AOC) and Direct-Attached Cable (DAC).
• High availability
  • Virtual Port Channel (vPC) technology provides Layer 2 multipath through the elimination of Spanning Tree Protocol. It also enables fully utilized bisectional bandwidth and simplified Layer 2 logical topologies without the need to change the existing management and deployment models.
  • The 64-way Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP) routing enables the use of Layer 3 fat-tree designs. This feature allows organizations to prevent network bottlenecks, increase resiliency, and add capacity with little network disruption.
  • Advanced reboot capabilities include hot and cold patching and fast reboot capabilities.
  • The switch uses hot-swappable Power-Supply Units (PSUs) and fans.
• Purpose-built NX-OS operating system with comprehensive, proven innovations
  • Power-on Autoprovisioning (POAP) enables touchless bootup and configuration of the switch, drastically reducing provisioning time.
  • Cisco Embedded Event Manager (EEM) and Python scripting enable automation and remote operations in the data center.
  • Advanced buffer monitoring reports real-time buffer utilization per port and per queue, which allows organizations to monitor traffic bursts and application traffic patterns.
  • Ethanalyzer is a built-in packet analyzer for monitoring and troubleshooting control-plane traffic and is based on the popular Wireshark open-source network protocol analyzer.
  • Complete Layer 3 unicast and multicast routing protocol suites are supported, including Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Routing Information Protocol Version 2 (RIPv2), Protocol Independent Multicast Sparse Mode (PIM-SM), Source-Specific Multicast (SSM), and Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP).

Transceiver and cabling options

The Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z has 32 QSFP28 ports. QSFP28 technology allows a smooth transition from 40 to 100 Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure in data centers. Each of the Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z switch’s QSFP28 ports can operate in native 100, 4 x 25, 4 x 10, or 2 x 50 Gigabit Ethernet mode. In addition to the QSFP28 technology, the Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z also supports 40/100G Bidi to help customers run 40G and 100G at the same time in their Data Centers.

This switch supports both fiber and copper cabling solutions for these two modes. For low-cost cabling, copper-based 40-Gbps Twinax cables can be used, and for longer cable reaches, short-reach optical transceivers are excellent. Connectivity can be established from the QSFP28 ports to 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches or hosts using a splitter cable that has an Enhanced QSFP (QSFP+) transceiver on one end and four SFP+ transceivers on the other end. Similar capability can be achieved on the fiber solution by using QSFP+ SR4 transceivers on both ends and procuring third-party fiber splitter MPO-to-LC cables. Table 2 lists the transceiver types supported.

• QSFP-100G-AOC (1m-30m): QSFP 100-Gbps to QSFP 100-Gbps AOC: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, and 30m
• QSFP-100G-CU (1m-5m): QSFP 100-Gbps to QSFP 100-Gbps copper DAC: 1, 2, 3, and 5m
• QSFP-100G-SR4-S: 100GBASE SR4 transceiver module with MPO-12 connector, multimode fiber up to 100m
• QSFP-100G-LR4-S: 100GBASE LR4 transceiver module for Single-Mode Fiber (SMF) with LC connector, 10km
• QSFP-100G-CWDM4-S: 100GBASE CWDM4 transceiver module for SMF with LC connector, 2km
• QSFP-100G-PSM4-S: 100GBASE PSM4 transceiver module with MPO-12 connector, SMF up to 500m

Specifications

Documentation:

Download the Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z Switch Datasheet (PDF).

Cisco Nexus 3200 Series Switch:

The Cisco Nexus 3200 Series Switches are a comprehensive portfolio of 1,10/25,40,50,100G Gigabit Ethernet switches built from a Switch-on-a-Chip (SoC) architecture. Introduced in April 2011, this series of switches provides line-rate Layer 2 and 3 performance and is suitable for Top-of-the-Rack (ToR) architecture.

Main Benefits

The Cisco Nexus 3200 provides the following:

• Wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching on all ports, with up to 6.4 Terabits per second (Tbps) and up to 3.3 billion packets per second (bpps)
• Robust programmability, with support for Cisco NX-API, Linux containers, XML and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) APIs, the OpenStack plug-in, Python, and Puppet and Chef configuration and automation tools
• High performance and scalability with a four-core CPU, 8 GB of DRAM, and 16 Mb of dynamic buffer allocation, making the switch excellent for massively scalable data centers and big data applications
• Flexibility
  • The QSFP28 port can be configured to work as 4 x 25-Gbps ports, offering deployment flexibility, with up to a maximum of 128 x 25-Gbps ports.
  • Both fiber and copper cabling solutions are available for 10-, 25-, 40-, 50-, and 100-Gbps connectivity, including Active Optical Cable (AOC) and Direct-Attached Cable (DAC).
• High availability
  • Virtual PortChannel (vPC) technology provides Layer 2 multipathing through the elimination of Spanning Tree Protocol. It also enables fully utilized bisectional bandwidth and simplified Layer 2 logical topologies without the need to change the existing management and deployment models.
  • The 64-way equal-cost multipath (ECMP) routing enables the use of Layer 3 fat-tree designs. This feature allows organizations to prevent network bottlenecks, increase resiliency, and add capacity with little network disruption.
  • Advanced reboot capabilities include hot and cold patching and fast reboot capabilities. ◦ The switch uses hot-swappable Power-Supply Units (PSUs) and fans.
• Purpose-built NX-OS operating system with comprehensive, proven innovations
  • Power-On Auto Provisioning (POAP) enables touchless bootup and configuration of the switch, drastically reducing provisioning time.
  • Cisco Embedded Event Manager (EEM) and Python scripting enable automation and remote operations in the data center.
  • Advanced buffer monitoring reports real-time buffer utilization per port and per queue, which allows organizations to monitor traffic bursts and application traffic patterns.
  • Ethanalyzer is a built-in packet analyzer for monitoring and troubleshooting control-plane traffic and is based on the popular Wireshark open-source network protocol analyzer.
  • Complete Layer 3 unicast and multicast routing protocol suites are supported, including Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Routing Information Protocol Version 2 (RIPv2), Protocol Independent Multicast Sparse Mode (PIM-SM), Source-Specific Multicast (SSM), and Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP).

Specifications

Documentation:

Download the Cisco Nexus 3232C Switch Datasheet (PDF).

Download the Cisco Nexus 3264Q Switch Datasheet (PDF).

Download the Cisco Nexus 3264C-E Switch Datasheet (PDF).

Cisco Nexus 3400 Series Switch:

Cisco Nexus 3400 Series portfolio support enterprise applications, service provider hosting, financial networks applications, and secured cloud computing environments. These switches support a wide range of port speeds, with flexible combinations of 10-, 25-, 40-, and 100-Gigabit Ethernet connectivity and improved scalability and configurability because of the switch’s capacity to modify and customize packet-forwarding behavior.

Features and Benefits

The Cisco Nexus 3400 Series provide the following benefits:

• Wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching on all ports, with up to 3.6 Terabits per second (Tbps) and up to 1.4 billion packets per second (bpps) for the 34180YC model, and up to 12.8 Tbps and 5.2 bpps for the 3464C model and up to 25.6 Terabits per second (Tbps) with 7.2 Bpps at ingress and 10 Bpps at egress for 3432D-S and 3408-S model
• NXOS programmability, with support for Cisco NX-API, Linux containers, Extensible Markup Language (XML), and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), the OpenStack plug-in, Python, and Puppet and Chef configuration and automation tools.
• Forwarding pipeline programmability allows customers to implement a breadth of packet-forwarding and filtering use cases with the same hardware. These implementations are made possible by the switch's capacity to flexibly allocate hardware resources and define custom match-action logic. They take shape in the form of profiles selectable through Cisco NX-OS software. In addition, chipset programmability provides customers with investment protection as it extends the product's lifecycle with the possible support of all existing and future packet encapsulation and decapsulation formats. It allows customers to innovate at the speed of software development.
• Inband Network Telemetry (INT) is a framework that enables the collection and reporting of network states at wire-rate, by the data plane, without requiring the intervention of the control plane. Telemetry is the foundation of network automation; combined with pipeline reprogramming, it is used to close the loop on correcting anomalies and rebalancing workloads across network resources. Telemetry data for a given packet is cumulated at every node and inserted into the packet header. It is then collected by a destination switch and exported to an analytics engine. Telemetry information includes, but is not limited to, aggregate buffer usage and latency data across the network, microburst tracking and aggressor flow detection, and packet path tracing and drop history. Alternately, the framework supports a postcard mode that allows reporting of network states on a node by node basis.
• Deep header and packet parsing beyond the traditional 128B allows for monitoring application transactions and may be used to define new metadata, which in turn enables customers to fine-tune the match-action logic to a desired forwarding or filtering behavior.
• Precision Time Protocol (PTP) as per IEEE 1588 provides accurate clock synchronization and improved data correlation with network captures and system events.
• High-availability, provisioning, and advanced maintenance capabilities: This switch supports hot and cold patching and Graceful Insertion and Removal (GIR) mode. Power-on Auto Provisioning (POAP) enables touchless bootup and configuration of the switch, drastically reducing provisioning time. The switch uses hot-swappable Power Supply Units (PSUs) and fans.

Specifications

Documentation:

Download the Cisco Nexus 3408-S Switch Datasheet (PDF).

Download the Cisco Nexus 34180YC and 3464C Programmable Switch Datasheet (PDF).

Download the Cisco Nexus 3432D-S Switch Datasheet (PDF).

Cisco Nexus 3500 Series Switch:

The Cisco Nexus 3500 platform further extends the leadership of the Cisco Nexus 3000 Series by including the innovative Cisco Algorithm Boost (or Algo Boost) technology. Algo Boost technology, built into the switch Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), allows the Cisco Nexus 3500 platform to achieve exceptional Layer 2 and 3 switching latencies of less than 200 nanoseconds (ns).

Cisco Nexus 3548 and 3524 Switches

The Cisco Nexus 3548 and 3524 Switches (Figure 1) are based on identical hardware, differentiated only by their software licenses, which allow the Cisco Nexus 3524 to operate 24 ports, and enable the use of all 48 ports on the Cisco Nexus 3548. These fixed switches are compact One-Rack-Unit (1RU) form-factor 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches that provide line-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching with ultra-low latency. Both software licenses run the industry-leading Cisco NX-OS Software operating system, providing customers with comprehensive features and functions that are deployed globally. The Cisco Nexus 3548 and 3524 contain no physical layer (PHY) chips, allowing low latency and low power consumption. These switches support both forward and reversed airflow schemes and both AC and DC power inputs.

The Cisco Nexus 3548 and 3524 have the following hardware configuration:

• 48 fixed Enhanced Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP+) ports (1 or 10 Gbps); the Cisco Nexus 3524 enables only 24 ports
• Dual redundant hot-swappable power supplies
• Four individual redundant hot-swappable fans
• One 1-PPS timing port, with the RF1.0/2.3 QuickConnect connector type*
• Two 10/100/1000 management ports
• One RS-232 serial console port
• One USB port
• Locator LED
• Locator LED button

Support for both port-side exhaust and port-side intake airflow schemes is available. Port-side exhaust airflow is useful when the port side of the switch sits on a hot aisle and the power supply side sits on a cold aisle. Port-side intake airflow is useful when the power supply side of the switch sits on a hot aisle and the port side sits on a cold aisle.

Colored handles on each fan or power supply clearly indicate the airflow direction.

Cisco Nexus 3548 and 3524 with blue handles indicating port-side exhaust airflow

Cisco Nexus 3548 and 3524 with red handles indicating port-side intake airflow

Cisco Nexus 3548-X and 3524-X Switches

The Cisco Nexus 3548-X and 3524-X Switches (Figure 4) are the next generation of the Cisco Nexus 3500 platform. Like the previous generation, these switches are compact 1RU form-factor 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches and provide line-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching with ultra-low latency. In addition, they consume 25 percent less power. This new generation introduces powerful hardware-based multicast NAT and latency monitoring capabilities and a second USB port for easier manageability.

The Cisco Nexus 3548-X and 3524-X have the following hardware configuration:

• 48 fixed SFP+ ports (1 or 10 Gbps); the Cisco Nexus 3524-X enables only 24 ports
• Dual redundant hot-swappable power supplies
• Four individual redundant hot-swappable fans
• One 1-PPS timing port, with the RF1.0/2.3 QuickConnect connector type*
• Two 10/100/1000 management ports
• One RS-232 serial console port
• Two USB ports
• Locator LED
• Locator LED button

Support for both port-side exhaust and port-side intake airflow schemes is available. Port-side exhaust airflow is useful when the port side of the switch sits on a hot aisle and the power supply side sits on a cold aisle. Port-side intake airflow is useful when the power supply side of the switch sits on a hot aisle and the port side sits on a cold aisle.

Colored handles on each fan or power supply clearly indicate the airflow direction.

Cisco Nexus 3548-X and 3524-X with blue handles indicating port-side exhaust airflow

Cisco Nexus 3548-X and 3524-X with red handles indicating port-side intake airflow

Cisco Nexus 3548-XL and 3524-XL Switches

The Cisco Nexus 3548-XL and 3524-XL Switches (Figure 7) are, respectively, Cisco Nexus 3548-X and 3524-X Switches with a faster CPU, running at 2.5 GHz; system memory increased to 16 GB; and bootflash memory increased to 16 GB. These enhancements allow the switches to support the Cisco NX-OS Data Management Engine (DME) model.

The Cisco Nexus 3548-XL and 3524-XL have the following hardware configuration:

• 48 fixed SFP+ ports (1 or 10 Gbps); the Cisco Nexus 3524-XL enables only 24 ports
• Dual redundant hot-swappable power supplies
• Four individual redundant hot-swappable fans
• One 1-PPS timing port, with the RF1.0/2.3 QuickConnect connector type*
• Two 10/100/1000 management ports
• One RS-232 serial console port
• Two USB ports
• Locator LED
• Locator LED button

Support for both port-side exhaust and port-side intake airflow schemes is available. Port-side exhaust airflow is useful when the port side of the switch sits on a hot aisle and the power supply side sits on a cold aisle. Port-side intake airflow is useful when the power supply side of the switch sits on a hot aisle and the port side sits on a cold aisle.

Colored handles on each fan or power supply clearly indicate the airflow direction.

Cisco Nexus 3548-XL and 3524-XL with blue handles indicating port-side exhaust airflow

Cisco Nexus 3548-XL and 3524-XL with red handles indicating port-side intake airflow

Features and Benefits

The Cisco Nexus 3500 Series provide the following benefits:

• Three configurable modes for low latency
  • Normal mode: This mode is excellent for environments needing low latency and high scalability. In this mode, latencies as low as 250 ns can be paired with the higher of the Layer 2 and 3 scaling values listed later in this document.
  • Warp mode: For those customers with smaller environments who demand the lowest latencies possible, warp mode consolidates forwarding operations within the switch ASIC, lowering latency by up to an additional 20 percent compared to normal operation. In this mode, latencies as low as 200 ns can be paired with the smaller of the Layer 2 and 3 scaling values listed later in this document.
  • Warp SPAN: In some environments, a stream of traffic entering one port simply needs to be copied to a list of outgoing ports as quickly as possible without processing or modification. The Cisco Nexus 3500 platform's warp SPAN capability allows all traffic entering a single port on the switch to be replicated to any number of destination ports at latencies as low as 50 ns.
• Hitless Network Address Translation (NAT): In many financial trading environments, trade orders must be sourced from the IP space of the provider, requiring NAT at the border between networks. The Cisco Nexus 3500 platform can perform NAT for IPv4 unicast routed packets without incurring any additional latency. The Cisco Nexus 3548-X and 3524-X Switches introduce multicast NAT to the platform's capability. Customers hosting co-locations will find this feature useful in simplifying their network topologies and concealing details of their data centers.
• Latency monitoring: When nanoseconds matter, switch latency monitoring is essential to your company's profitability. The Cisco Nexus 3548-X and 3524-X enable users to finely control their environments to increase network performance. Customers can identify latency on a specific egress port through the Command-Line Interface (CLI) and export this information to a file. The programmability of the Cisco Nexus 3548-X allows users to use this information in real time.
• Active buffer monitoring: Even on the lowest-latency switches, data packets can incur a millisecond or more of latency during periods of congestion. Today's switches do not adequately inform administrators about the presence of this congestion, leaving them unaware and hindered in their ability to address the conditions causing suboptimal performance. Previous buffer utilization monitoring techniques were based entirely on software polling algorithms with polling intervals higher than 100 ms, which can miss important congestion events. In contrast, Algo Boost accelerates the collection of buffer utilization data in hardware, allowing sampling intervals of 10 ns or less.
• Advanced traffic mirroring: The Algo Boost technology on the Cisco Nexus 3500 platform facilitates not only network troubleshooting by supporting Cisco Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) and Encapsulated Remote SPAN (ERSPAN) technologies, but also in-service network monitoring with enhancements including the capability to:
  • Apply user-configurable filters to reduce the amount of captured traffic to a specified flow or protocol
  • Capture a sample of eligible packets, such as one out of every thousand
  • Truncate packets after a user-defined threshold
  • Insert a nanosecond-level timestamp in the ERSPAN header of captured packets (requires ERSPAN and Precision Time Protocol [PTP])
• IEEE 1588 PTP with Pulse-Per-Second (PPS) output*
  • The capability to build and maintain a synchronized, accurate timing solution is the basis for successful provisioning and management of HFT networks and applications. Using IEEE 1588 PTP, Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches can deliver highly accurate precision time synchronization to applications within existing network infrastructure with no need to invest in and deploy a separate timing network.
  • Network administrators deploying IEEE 1588 PTP often find it challenging to measure the accuracy to which each device is synchronized. To assist in this effort, the Cisco Nexus 3500 platform includes a 1‑PPS output port that can be used to measure timing drift from the grandmaster clock.
• Network traffic monitoring with Cisco Nexus Data Broker
  • Build simple, scalable and cost-effective network tap or SPAN aggregation for network traffic monitoring and analysis. With Cisco Nexus 3500 platform switches, you can:
    • Truncate packets after a user-defined threshold at ingress
    • Time-stamp packets using Precision Time Protocol (PTP) with nanosecond accuracy

Specifications

Documentation:

Download the Cisco Nexus 3548-X, 3524-X, 3548-XL and 3524-XL Switch Datasheet (PDF).

Cisco Nexus 3600 Series Switch:

The Cisco Nexus 3600 Series Switch is a high-speed, high-density, 1, 10, 25, 40, or 100 Gigabit Ethernet switch designed for data center aggregation. The large buffers and routing table sizes of the Cisco Nexus C36180YC-R also make this switch an alternative for a wide range of applications, such as IP storage, Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), big data, and edge routing. The switch comes in a compact 1-Rack-Unit (1RU) form factor and provides extensive Layer 2 and Layer 3 functions. It is part of the R-Series family and runs the industry-leading NX-OS operating system software.

Features and Benefits

The Cisco Nexus 3600 Series provide the following benefits:

• Wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching on all ports, with up to 3.6 Terabits per second (Tbps) and up to 1.67 billion packets per second (bpps) for C36180YC-R model and up to 7.2 Terabits per second (Tbps) and up to 3.34 billion packets per second (bpps) for 3636C-R model
• Programmability, with support for Cisco® NX-API, Linux containers, Extensible Markup Language (XML), and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), the OpenStack plug-in, Python, and Puppet and Chef configuration and automation tools
• High performance and scalability with a 6-core CPU, 32 GB of DRAM, and 8 GB of dynamic buffer allocation, making the switch excellent for massively scalable data centers and big data applications
• Flexibility:
  • Both fiber and copper cabling solutions are available for 1-, 10-, 25-, 40-, 50-, and 100-Gbps connectivity, including Active Optical Cable (AOC) and Direct-Attached Cable (DAC)
  • The QSFP28 ports can be configured to work as 4 x 25-Gbps or 4 x 10-Gbps ports
• High availability:
  • Virtual PortChannel (vPC) technology provides Layer 2 multipathing by eliminating the Spanning Tree Protocol. It also enables fully used bisectional bandwidth and simplified Layer 2 logical topologies without the need to change the existing management and deployment models
  • Advanced maintenance capabilities include hot and cold patching and Graceful Insertion and Removal (GIR) mode
  • The switch uses hot-swappable Power-Supply Units (PSUs) and fans
• NX-OS operating system with comprehensive, proven innovations:
  • Power-On Auto Provisioning (POAP) enables touchless bootup and configuration of the switch, drastically reducing provisioning time ◦ Cisco Embedded Event Manager (EEM) and Python scripting enable automation and remote operations in the data center
  • Ethanalyzer is a built-in packet analyzer for monitoring and troubleshooting control-plane traffic and is based on the popular Wireshark open-source network protocol analyzer
  • Complete Layer 3 unicast and multicast routing protocol suites are supported, including Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Routing Information Protocol Version 2 (RIPv2), Protocol Independent Multicast Sparse Mode (PIM-SM), Source-Specific Multicast (SSM), and Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP)

Specifications

Documentation:

Download the Cisco Nexus C36180YC-R Switch Datasheet (PDF).

Download the Cisco Nexus 3636C-R Switch Datasheet (PDF).