Datasheet

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Effective bandwidth usage: Today’s data center servers are either single- or dual-homed to the network.
However, network designs almost always involve redundant deployment. Through the vPC feature support
on the Cisco Nexus 5000 or Nexus 6000 Series, a server can be dually connected to a pair of fabric
extenders, or each fabric extender can be connected to a pair of Cisco Nexus 5000 or Nexus 6000 Series
Switches, thus giving customers both server and fabric extender connectivity redundancy and providing
active-active connectivity with twice the bandwidth usage as in active-standby or forwarding-blocking
configurations.
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Reduced power and cooling: Cost-effective 10 Gigabit Ethernet solutions, optimal cabling, device
consolidation, rack-space reduction, and efficient bandwidth use all contribute to a significant reduction in
power and cooling needs in the data center.
Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Deployment Scenarios
The fabric extenders can be used in the following deployment scenarios:
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Rack servers with 100 Megabit Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, or 10 Gigabit Ethernet network interface cards
(NICs); the fabric extender can be physically located at the top of the rack and the Cisco Nexus parent
switch can reside in the middle or at the end of the row, or the fabric extender and the Cisco Nexus parent
switch can both reside at the end or middle of the row.
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10 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE deployments, using servers with converged network adapters (CNAs) for
unified fabric environments with the Cisco Nexus 2232PP, Nexus 2248PQ, and Nexus 2232TM-E.
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1/10 Gigabit Ethernet BASE-T server connectivity with ease of migration from 1 to 10GBASE-T and
effective reuse of structured cabling.
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Server racks with integrated lights-out (iLO) management, with 100 Megabit Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet
management and iLO interfaces.
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Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet blade servers with pass-through blades.
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Low-latency, high-performance computing environments.
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Virtualized access.
For more information, visit the Cisco Nexus 2000 Series case studies page:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10110/prod_case_studies_list.html.
The Cisco Nexus 2000 Series can be used in conjunction with a Cisco Nexus parent switch in two main design
scenarios (shown in Figure 1):
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Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders single-connected to one upstream Cisco Nexus 5000, Nexus
6000, or Nexus 7000 Series Switch: In this deployment scenario, access-layer redundancy is achieved
through redundant server connections to two upstream distributed modular systems using vPC (Cisco
Nexus 5000 or Nexus 6000 Series) or server NIC teaming to two Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric
Extenders.
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Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders dual-connected to two upstream Cisco Nexus 5000 or Nexus
6000 Series Switches (vPC): In this deployment scenario, access-layer redundancy is achieved through a
combination of Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders dual-connected to an upstream parent switch
and server NIC teaming.