User guide

3.6.2 Cisco Nexus 5500 Series Feature Highlights

3.6.2.1 Features and Benefits

The switch family's rich feature set makes the series ideal for rack-level, access-layer applications. It protects

investments in data center racks with standards based Ethernet and FCoE features that allow IT departments to

consolidate networks based on their own requirements and timing.

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The combination of high port density, wire-speed performance, and extremely low latency makes the switch

an ideal product to meet the growing demand for 10 Gigabit Ethernet at the rack level. The switch family

has sufficient port density to support single or multiple racks fully populated with blade and rack-mount

servers.

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Built for today‘s data centers, the switches are designed just like the servers they support. Ports and power

connections are at the rear, closer to server ports, helping keep cable lengths as short and efficient as

possible. Hot-swappable power and cooling modules can be accessed from the front panel, where status

lights offer an at-a-glance view of switch operation. Front-to-back cooling is consistent with server designs,

supporting efficient data center hot- and cold-aisle designs. Serviceability is enhanced with all customer-

replaceable units accessible from the front panel. The use of SFP+ ports offers increased flexibility to use a

range of interconnect solutions, including copper for short runs and fiber for long runs.

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Fibre Channel over Ethernet and IEEE Data Center Bridging features supports I/O consolidation, eases

management of multiple traffic flows, and optimizes performance. Although implementing SAN

consolidation requires only the lossless fabric provided by the Ethernet pause mechanism, the Cisco Nexus

5500 Series provides additional features that create an even more easily managed, high-performance,

unified network fabric.

3.6.2.2 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Unified Fabric Features

The Cisco Nexus 5500 Series is first and foremost a family of outstanding access switches for 10 Gigabit Ethernet

connectivity. Most of the features on the switches are designed for high performance with 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

The Cisco Nexus 5500 Series also supports FCoE on each 10 Gigabit Ethernet port that can be used to

implement a unified data center fabric, consolidating LAN, SAN, and server clustering traffic.

3.6.2.3 Low Latency

The cut-through switching technology used in the Cisco Nexus 5500 Series ASICs enables the product to offer a

low latency of 3.2 microseconds, which remains constant regardless of the size of the packet being switched. This

latency was measured on fully configured interfaces, with access control lists (ACLs), quality of service (QoS),

and all other data path features turned on. The low latency on the Cisco Nexus 5500 Series enables application-

to-application latency on the order of 10 microseconds (depending on the network interface card [NIC]). These

numbers, together with the congestion management features described next, make the Cisco Nexus 5500 Series

a great choice for latency-sensitive environments.

Other features include: Nonblocking Line-Rate Performance, Single-Stage Fabric, Congestion Management,

Virtual Output Queues, Lossless Ethernet (Priority Flow Control), Delayed Drop Fibre Channel over Ethernet,

Hardware-Level I/O Consolidation, and End-Port Virtualization. For more information, refer to

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9670/prod_white_papers_list.html.

3.7 Microsoft Windows 7

Microsoft introduced Windows 7 in fall of 2009 as their next generation desktop operating system to succeed

Windows XP, their other flagship software. According to IDC report around 70 percent of the enterprise users are

using Windows XP and a majority of them are already looking to migrate to Windows 7.