Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches

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Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switchesview expanded image

Gain a Fabric-Extensible, Innovative Platform

Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches are designed to deliver high-density top-of-rack (ToR) Layer 2 and Layer 3, 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet with unified ports in compact one-, two-, and four-rack-unit form factors. The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series includes the Cisco Nexus 5500 and 5600 platforms as part of the Cisco Unified Fabric portfolio.

The comprehensive Cisco NX-OS feature set and 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet scalability of the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series deliver high performance, operational efficiency, and design flexibility

Cisco Nexus 5600 Video Data Sheet

Learn how these next-generation switches meet the demands of large-scale converged and virtualized data centers. (6:47 min)

    The comprehensive Cisco NX-OS feature set and 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet scalability of the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series deliver high performance, operational efficiency, and design flexibility.

    Features and Capabilities of the Nexus 5600

    The Cisco Nexus 5600 platform offers broad connectivity support, low latency, and virtual extensible LAN (VXLAN) technology. These capabilities make the switches ideal for ToR and end-of-rack (EoR) access and Cisco Fabric Extender (FEX) aggregation in traditional, converged, virtualized, and cloud deployments.

    Scale

    The Cisco 5600 platform is designed to meet the scaling demands of virtualized and cloud deployments. These switches:

    • Support up to 2304 ports in a single management domain with Cisco FEX architecture
    • Support large buffers for congestion management
    • Provide a hardware-based VXLAN (Layer 2, Layer 3, and gateway) and are capable of network virtualization generic routing encapsulation (NVGRE)
    • Deliver integrated Layer 3 services with large table sizes and buffers with 1-microsecond latency

    Operational Efficiency

    The Cisco 5600 switches simplify operations in the following ways:

    • The Cisco FEX architecture provides a single point of management.
    • An advanced analytics toolkit makes it easy to monitor latency and buffering.
    • Programmers can use Python, Tool Command Language (Tcl), the Cisco ONE Platform Kit (onePK), and OpenFlow.

    Architectural Flexibility

    The Cisco 5600 switches provide deployment flexibility for varying customer needs:

    • Broad connectivity support includes Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 40 Gigabit Ethernet, and 100 Gigabit Ethernet; native Fibre Channel; and Fibre Channel over Ethernet.
    • Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation (DFA) is supported for simplified virtualized and cloud deployments.
    • Cisco FabricPath is supported for scalable Layer 2 networks.

    Features and Capabilities of the Nexus 5500

    The Cisco Nexus 5500 Switches simplify convergence through broad connectivity support. This makes them ideal top-of-rack access switches for traditional and converged deployments.

    Scale

    The Cisco 5500 switches are designed to meet the scalability demands of today's data centers. They offer:

    • Up to 1152 ports in a single management domain using Cisco FEX architecture
    • Up to 96 unified ports

    Operational Efficiency

    Operations are simplified with:

    Flexible Architecture

    The Cisco 5500 switches deliver deployment flexibility to meet varying customer needs:

    • Broad connectivity support includes Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 10-BASE-T, 40 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks, native Fibre Channel, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).
    • Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation (DFA) is supported for simplified virtualized and cloud deployments.
    • Cisco FabricPath is supported for scalable Layer 2 networks.

    Cisco Wins Market Leader Award

    Cisco Nexus Switches earn IT Brand Pulse's FCoE brand recognition award.

    See how Fabric Extender Technology makes more efficient use of resources. (3:50 min)

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