Cisco WS-C3550-12G Switch Guide - Page 249

Cisco Fabric Extender Technology Cisco Unified Fabric provides the foundational connectivity and unifies storage, data networking and network services delivering architectural flexibility and consistent networking across physical, virtual and cloud environment, enabling convergence, network scale, virtualization awareness, and intelligence through the industryleading Cisco NX-OS. As a key component to Cisco Unified Fabric, Cisco Fabric Extender (FEX) Technology comprises of technologies that enable fabric extensibility with simplified management enabling the switching access layer to extend and expand all the way to the server hypervisor as the customer's business grows. Based on the emerging standard IEEE 802.1BR, Cisco FEX Technology solution comprises of a parent switch that can be a Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch, Nexus 7000 Series Switch or a Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect. The parent switch is then extended to connect to the server either as a remote line card with Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders or logically partition or virtualize adapter ports to connect to any type of servers-rack and/or blades, with Cisco Adapter FEX and VM-FEX technologies. 247