Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Release Notes for Release 5.0(3)N2(2) (June 2011)

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Cisco Nexus 5000 Series and Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Release Notes, for Cisco NX-OS Release 5.0(3)N2(2) and Release 5.0(3)N2(1)
System Requirements
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches include a family of line-rate, low-latency, lossless 10-Gigabit
Ethernet, Cisco Data Center Ethernet, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and now native Fibre
Channel switches for data center applications. The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series includes the Cisco Nexus
5500 Platform and the Cisco Nexus 5000 Platform.
For information about the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series, see the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series and Cisco Nexus
5500 Platform Hardware Installation Guide.
Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders
The Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extender (FEX) is a highly scalable and flexible server networking
solution that works with the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches to provide high-density and low-cost
connectivity for server aggregation. Scaling across 1-Gigabit Ethernet, 10-Gigabit Ethernet, unified
fabric, rack, and blade server environments, the FEX is designed to simplify data center architecture and
operations.
The FEX integrates with its parent Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch which allows zero-touch
provisioning and automatic configuration. The FEX provides a single point of management that supports
a large numbers of servers and hosts that can be configured with the same feature set as the parent Cisco
Nexus 5000 Series switch, including security and quality of service (QoS) configuration parameters.
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is not required between the Fabric Extender and its parent switch, because
the Fabric Extender and its parent switch allow you to enable a large multi-path, loop-free, active-active
topology.
Software is not included with the Fabric Extender. Cisco NX-OS software is automatically downloaded
and upgraded from its parent switch. For information about configuring the Cisco Nexus 2000 FEX, see
the “Configuring the Fabric Extender” chapter in the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Layer 2 Switching
Configuration Guide.
System Requirements
This section includes the following topics:
• Hardware Supported, page 3
• Online Insertion and Removal Support, page 5
Hardware Supported
The Cisco NX-OS software supports the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series. You can find detailed information
about supported hardware in the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Hardware Installation Guide.
Table 2 shows the hardware supported by Cisco NX-OS Release 5.0(x) software.