Data Center Architecture with Panduit, Intel, and Cisco

4
AN-02
Panduit
®
TX6A
™
and TX6A-SD
™
10Gig
™
Copper Cabling
Other advances in 10GBASE-T have come with new higher performance and smaller diameter copper cabling. Early
generations of Category 6A 10 GbE compliant cabling were rather large in diameter, up to 0.350 inch, in order to suppress
cable to cable coupling known as alien crosstalk. Newer cabling technology such as Panduit’s TX6A
™
10Gig
™
UTP
(Unshielded Twisted Pair) cabling with patented MaTriX Technology has reduced the cable diameter to a more manageable
0.300 inch while not sacrificing performance. In addition, for applications such as large data centers in which reduced
cabling density is important, Panduit offers TX6A-SD
™
10Gig
™
(small diameter) UTP cable with MaTriX Technology.
The TX6A-SD
™
10Gig
™
cable provides fully compliant Category 6A/10Gig
™
performance over a channel up to 70 meters
(230 ft.) with a cable diameter of only 0.240 inch. This is similar in size to previous generations of Category 6 cabling and
allows full re-use of existing pathways and cable managers to facilitate seamless migration from GbE to 10 GbE.
Cisco Nexus 2232TM 10GbE Fabric Extender
The Cisco Nexus 2232TM fabric extenders have 32 ports of 1/10GBASE-T and 8 SFP+ ports and behave as remote I/O
modules for a parent Cisco Nexus 5000 Series or 7000 Series Switch. The fabric extender, essentially an extension of the
Nexus switch fabric, works together with the parent switch to form a distributed modular system. The Cisco Nexus 2232TM
forwards all traffic to the parent switch over 10 GbE up-links. Passing all traffic to the parent switch allows traffic to be
shaped according to homogeneous policies established on the parent switch with a single point of management across
more than (1,500) 1GbE ports and more than (1000) 10 GbE ports.
The distributed modular system architecture includes the following benefits:
• Architectural flexibility
• Highly scalable server access
• Simplified operations
• Increased business benefits
Industry Category 6A Panduit TX6A
™
Cisco Nexus 2232TM
Panduit TX6A-SD
™
Comparison of 100 cables in the same pathway
32 1/10GBASE-T downlink ports
8 10G SFP+ uplinks