Cisco WS-C3550-12G Switch Guide - Page 6

Introduction Series Overview Intelligent Switching for the Integrated Network Modular Switches Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches are Cisco's Flagship modular switching platform for data center Unified Fabric deployments and for highly scalable campus core deployments. They are designed for exceptional 10 GE, 40 GE and 100 GE scalability with the industry's highest resiliency features and unmatched deployment flexibility for the data center core, aggregation, access and campus core. It's industry leading NX-OS innovations and robust feature set enable you to build the next generation network fabrics for both data centers and campus. System Scalability: Designed for up to 17Tbps of switching capacity and high density 10 GE, 40 GE and 100 GE, the modular 9, 10- or 18-slot chassis scales up to 768 1 GE ports or 768 10 GE ports or 96/32 40/100GE ports. Paired with the Nexus 2000 Series, the Nexus 7000 can scale to 32 fabric extenders, supporting up to 1536 Gigabit Ethernet servers per Cisco Nexus 7000 chassis. Network Scalability: Beyond the system scalability, the Nexus 7000 offers several features to scale the network itself. Cisco FabricPath enables customers to massively scale Layer 2 networks up to 160+ Tbps without the use of spanning-tree. For IP network scalability, Location/ID Seperation Protocol (LISP), enables IP portability and dynamic IP route look-up significantly increasing the scalability of layer 3 IP networks. Operational Continuity: Designed from the ground up with the goal of delivering continuous operations, the Nexus 7000 and NX-OS deliver a predictable and highly resilient switching platform for the most demanding network environments. With granular process modularity, automatic fault isolation and containment, the industry's only true hitless In Service Software Uprade (ISSU) capability and tightly integrated hardware resiliency features, the Nexus 7000 running NX-OS delivers the industry's most reliable operating system for operational continuity. 4 Network Consolidation and Segmentation: The Nexus 7000 offer numerous industry leading innovations for converging and segmenting the network infrastructure, LANs and WANs, significantly lowering TCO. Virtual Device Contexts (VDC), virtualize a single physical switch into multiple secure (PCI certified) logical switches for infrastructure consolidation. FCoE enables LAN and SAN network consolidation from server to storage, reducing network sprawl while increasing network agility. Other key features that enable WAN and LAN segmentation and convergence include MPLS, OTV, and VRF. Virtualization and Cloud Enablement: The Nexus 7000 and NX-OS innovations enable highly scalable virtualization deployments for both intra and inter data center deployments, essentially allowing any workload, any location at any scale. FabricPath enables a highly scalable fabric for large virtualized server deployments, enabling workload mobility across the data center. OTV and LISP allow seamless workload mobility between geographically separated data centers and also for bursting workloads to cloud providers. These and other features on the Nexus 7000 establish the foundation for large scale virtualization and cloud enablement.