Cisco Nexus 5000 Series and Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Release Notes, for Cisco NX-OS Release 5.0(2)N1(1) and NX-OS Release 5.0(2)N2(1) OL-22747-02, December 2010)

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Cisco Nexus 5000 Series and Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Release Notes, for Cisco NX-OS Release 5.0(2)N1(1) and NX-OS Release 5.0(2)N2(1)
OL-22747-02
Introduction
Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform
Cisco NX-OS Release 5.0(2)N1(1) introduces the Cisco Nexus 5500 platform which extends the
industry-leading versatility of the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series of purpose-built, 10-Gigabit Ethernet data
center class switches and provides higher density, lower latency, and multilayer services. The Cisco
Nexus 5500 Platform is well suited for enterprise-class data center server access layer deployments and
smaller scale, mid-market data center aggregation deployments across a diverse set of physical, virtual,
storage access, and high-performance compute data center environments. The first switch in this series
is the Cisco Nexus 5548 Switch.
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches comprise a family of line-rate, low-latency, lossless 10-Gigabit
Ethernet, Cisco Data Center Ethernet, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switches for data center
applications. The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series includes the Cisco Nexus 5020 switch and the Cisco Nexus
5010 switch.
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch hardware is described in the following topics:
• Cisco Nexus 5548 Switch, page 3
• Cisco Nexus 5010 Switch, page 4
Cisco Nexus 5548 Switch
The Cisco Nexus 5548P Switch is the first switch in the Cisco Nexus 5500 platform. It is a one-rack-unit
(1 RU), 10-Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switch that offers up to 960-Gbps
throughput and up to 48 ports. The switch has 32, 1/10-Gbps fixed Small Form-Factor Pluggable Plus
(SFP+) Ethernet and FCoE ports and one expansion slot. As a top-of-rack switch, all the servers in the
rack connect to the Cisco Nexus 5548P switch, and it connects to the LAN or SAN. It has the following
features:
• 1 RU 1/10-Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE switch that offers up to 960-Gbps throughput.
• 32 fixed SFP+ port and up to 1 expansion module
• Hardware that is capable of 1/10-Gigabit Ethernet
• 32,000 MAC address table entries
• Low-latency cut-through design that provides predictable, consistent traffic latency regardless of
packet size, traffic pattern, or enabled features on 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces
• Line-rate traffic throughput on all ports
• Extension through the Cisco Nexus 2000 Series
• Cisco Nexus 5548P supports the following expansion modules:
– 16-port 1 and 10-Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE module
– 8-port 8/4/2/1-Gbps Fibre Channel plus 8-port 1- and 10-Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE module
Cisco Nexus 5020 Switch
The Cisco Nexus 5020 is a 56-port switch. It is a two rack unit (2 RU), 10-Gigabit Ethernet, Cisco Data
Center Ethernet, FCoE, and Fibre Channel switch that provides 1.04 terabits per second (Tbps)
throughput with very low latency.