Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric AI Data Sheet
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To build on the robust and scalable AI infrastructure provided by Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, the Cisco Nexus® Hyperfabric AI solution offers a vertically integrated approach that unifies network, compute, GPUs, and storage components. This integration streamlines deployment and management, delivering optimized performance and agility tailored to enterprise AI workloads, enabling organizations to accelerate innovation with a cohesive, end-to-end AI platform.
Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric is a cloud-managed, full-stack AI infrastructure solution designed to accelerate AI lifecycle management from design to scale. This solution delivers high throughput, low latency, and scalable AI infrastructure optimized for AI workloads. It supports two deployment models:
● Hyperfabric AI: A turnkey, vertically integrated, and NVIDIA ERA–certified full-stack AI infrastructure solution, consisting of networking, servers, GPUs, and storage. It is cloud-managed to simplify the entire lifecycle, from design to operation, for demanding AI enterprise workloads. This prescriptive solution optimizes for time to value of dedicated AI clusters from concept to production.
● Bring Your Own AI (BYO AI) with Hyperfabric: Hyperfabric supports a Bring Your Own AI (BYO AI) approach, allowing enterprises to integrate their own servers, GPUs, and storage with Cisco’s cloud-managed network fabric for flexible, scalable AI infrastructure deployment.
AI solutions with Hyperfabric
Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric AI is a turnkey, on-premises, AI-cluster solution managed by a cloud-hosted controller, designed to simplify and accelerate AI deployments for enterprises. This cloud-managed vertical stack solution consisting of purpose-built hardware, software, a cloud controller, day-2 operations, automation, and Cisco support that eliminates complexity. IT, application, and DevOps teams manage the full lifecycle of designing, ordering, deploying, validating, monitoring, and scaling fabrics without requiring deep networking or operational expertise. It integrates Cisco’s high-performance networking hardware, including Cisco® Silicon One® switches and Cisco UCS C885A M8 Rack Servers with NVIDIA HGX, with a cloud-managed operational model. This solution offers preconfigured templates for AI clusters, enabling rapid design, deployment, and scaling of AI infrastructure with zero-touch provisioning and continuous monitoring. It supports a unified stack that includes networking, compute, GPUs and storage components, all managed through a cloud controller to provide full visibility and control. Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric AI is built to empower IT generalists, data scientists, and DevOps teams by delivering a simplified, scalable, and secure AI infrastructure that aligns with NVIDIA’s Enterprise Reference Architecture, facilitating efficient AI workloads and innovation across industries.
Figure 2 shows the key components of the solution. The key hardware components used in the cluster are described in the next section.
Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric AI
Key components
● Cisco Nexus 6000 Series Switches with Silicon One technology, including HF6100 variants
● Cisco UCS C885A M8 Rack servers equipped with NVIDIA HGX H200 GPUs and BlueField-3 DPUs
● Optional VAST data-storage platform integrated with Cisco UCS servers
● Cisco optics and cables
● Optional AI software stack including NVIDIA AI Enterprise (NVAIE).
● Onsite installation services by Cisco Customer Experience (CX)
Performance and features
● Certified by NVIDIA ERA for AI workloads, thus ensuring validated performance and scalability
● High-throughput fabric with 800 GB/s bandwidth and ultra-low latency
● Support for RDMA, NVMe-oF, and advanced telemetry
● Cloud-managed lifecycle with zero-touch provisioning and continuous software and firmware updates
● End-to-end assertion-based monitoring from network fabric to compute NICs and storage.
● Preconfigured leaf-and-spine pods for plug-and-play deployment
Scalability
● Modular design supporting small, medium, and large AI clusters
● Pre-configured designs for the entire infrastructure component suite – frontend, backend, rails, storage, and management
● Independent scaling of network, compute, GPUs, and storage resources
● Fully integrated turnkey solution with VAST storage or support for Bring Your Own Storage
Use cases and benefits
● Large-scale enterprise AI model training, fine tuning, and inference
● Dedicated AI/ML clusters with optimized efficiency and low latency
● Faster time to value with replicable deployment models
● Validated turnkey AI stack through Cisco, NVIDIA, and storage vendor partnership, ensuring optimized hardware and software integration
Architecture and cloud management
How Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric AI is built
The Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric AI offers a cloud-managed full-stack AI infrastructure that simplifies the entire lifecycle management process, including design, ordering, deployment, management, and scaling of AI compute, GPUs, storage, and network infrastructure. This solution features a cloud controller that enables comprehensive design, planning, ordering, operation, upgrade, and monitoring of the AI fabric down to the NIC level, with continuous monitoring of loss and latency. Switches, GPU clusters, and storage servers are bootstrapped and fully visible and controlled from the cloud, ensuring seamless management.
The infrastructure includes fit-for-purpose fabrics that are preconfigured specifically for AI workloads, providing a low-latency, lossless backend network alongside high-performance frontend and storage fabrics. Software and monitoring capabilities are integrated through a Hyperfabric container that delivers server network telemetry, unified administration of frontend, backend, storage, and management fabrics, as well as assertion-based fabric monitoring and real-time health checks.
Scalability and flexibility are key features of this architecture, supporting independent scaling of network, compute, and storage resources. Its modular design allows customers to bring their own storage or opt for fully integrated turnkey solutions, enabling tailored deployments that meet diverse AI workload requirements. This comprehensive approach facilitates fast, reliable AI cluster deployment with a replicable model that eases AI cluster management and future scalability.
Deployment experience
The guided installation process for Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric AI simplifies AI cluster deployments through real-time verification, cloud-managed lifecycle, continuous software updates, and a replicable deployment model. On day 0, users access the centralized cloud-managed controller portal at hyperfabric.cisco.com to plan and design the infrastructure using the designer tool, finalize the bill of materials including optics and cables, and begin installation planning based on the cabling plan. On day 1, upon equipment arrival, Cisco 6000 Series Switches, Cisco UCS servers with GPUs, and optional Cisco UCS servers with 3rd party storage software. are connected and registered to the cloud controller. The mobile-friendly portal provides step-by-step deployment guidance and real-time topology validation to ensure that the physical fabric matches the design. From day 2 onward, lifecycle management is handled remotely through the cloud controller, enabling monitoring, upgrades, and collaboration. This process automates provisioning, guides on-site tasks, and allows remote management to be accessible even to non-expert staff, thereby streamlining deployment and operational management of AI infrastructure.
Bring Your Own AI (BYO AI) with Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric
Bring Your Own AI (BYO AI) with Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric is a cloud-managed networking fabric solution designed to simplify the lifecycle management of an AI-cluster network. It offers a flexible, modular architecture where enterprises can bring their own servers, GPUs, storage, and software stack while leveraging Cisco’s high-performance Nexus Hyperfabric network fabric. The BYO AI with Hyperfabric provides enterprises the flexibility to maintain their preferred AI infrastructure servers, GPUs, and storage choices while benefiting from Cisco’s optimized, secure, and cloud-managed high-performance AI networking and management capabilities.
For BYO AI with Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric, the solution supports mixed AI inference and non-AI use cases by enabling a multi-purpose data-center environment that can handle both AI workloads and traditional non-AI services. This approach allows enterprises to deploy inference workloads alongside other applications within the same infrastructure, providing flexibility and efficient resource utilization.
Components
● Cisco Nexus 6000 Series Switches with Silicon One technology
● Customer-provided GPU servers, and storage
Features
● Cloud-managed network fabric with advanced telemetry and assertion-based monitoring for real-time health and performance visibility
● Supports multi-purpose data centers running AI and non-AI workloads enabling flexible infrastructure utilization High-performance network fabric optimized for AI workloads with ultra-low latency and high throughput
Management
● Network fabric managed through a cloud controller, providing centralized design, provisioning, monitoring, and upgrades
● AI software, compute, and storage managed separately by the customer, thereby allowing tailored operational control
Use cases
● Enterprises seeking easy-to-deploy, cloud-managed and operate network fabric
● Multi-purpose data centers supporting inference, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and fine tuning and other AI workloads alongside traditional applications
Network switch details
● HF6100-64ED: 64x 100/200/400/800 GbE OSFP form factor
● HF6100-32D: 32x 100/200/400 GbE QSFP56-DD form factor
● HF6100-60L4D: 60x 10/25/50 GbE SFP56
Fabric performance
● 800 GbE backend fabric leveraging Cisco’s silicon photonics technology for ultra-high bandwidth and low latency
● Linear scale-out performance with scaling, thereby ensuring consistent throughput and fabric efficiency as the network grows
A subscription entitlement is needed for every Cisco 6000 Series Switch that is deployed and used. Subscription entitlements may be initially purchased for three, five, or seven years and may be renewed. The subscription-feature entitlement tiers are based on fabric use cases. Currently, two packages are available: one (“Essentials”) for general-purpose fabrics for BYO AI and the second (“Premier”) for Hyperfabric AI. All the switches in a fabric must use the same entitlement tier; however, an organization may concurrently manage multiple fabrics that use different entitlement tiers.
Table 1. Essentials and Premier feature tiers
| Features |
Essentials (for BYO AI with Hyperfabric) |
Premier (only for Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric AI) |
| Cisco support 8x5xNBD |
Yes |
Yes |
| Cloud controller |
Yes |
Yes |
| Designer (no purchase required) |
Yes |
Yes |
| Cloud-driven software upgrades |
Yes |
Yes |
| BOM generation |
Yes |
Yes |
| On-site deployment assistance |
Yes |
Yes |
| Plug-and-play deployment |
Yes |
Yes |
| Spine-and-leaf topologies |
Yes |
Yes |
| Mesh (spineless) topologies |
Yes |
Yes |
| EVPN/VXLAN underlay (opaque) |
Yes |
Yes |
| Static and BGP routing |
Yes |
Yes |
| MLAG |
Yes |
Yes |
| Supports RDMA over Converged Ethernet v2 (RoCEv2) |
Yes |
Yes |
| Real-time cloud-accessed telemetry |
Yes |
Yes |
| IPv4 and IPv6 |
Yes |
Yes |
| Assertion-based monitoring |
Yes |
Yes |
| Survivable data and local management plane |
Yes |
Yes |
| Hardware-based attestation and security |
Yes |
Yes |
| API for headless provisioning and monitoring |
Yes |
Yes |
| AI use-case support |
Yes |
Yes |
| Aligned to NVIDIA Enterprise Reference Architecture |
No |
Yes |
| NVIDIA Adaptive Routing on backend switches |
No |
Yes |
| Deploy AI-validated blueprints built into workflow |
No |
Yes |
| Automatically provisions lossless backend AI and storage networks |
No |
Yes |
| Internal performance monitoring between switches and servers |
No |
Yes |
| Options for AI servers |
Cisco UCS or Bring-Your-Own |
Bundled Cisco UCS |
Information about Cisco’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives and performance is provided in Cisco’s CSR and sustainability reporting.
Table 2. Cisco environmental sustainability information
| Sustainability topic |
Reference |
|
| General |
Information on product-material-content laws and regulations |
|
| Information on electronic waste laws and regulations, including our products, batteries, and packaging |
||
| Information on product takeback and reuse program |
||
| Sustainability inquiries |
Contact: csr_inquiries@cisco.com |
|
| Material |
Product packaging weight and materials |
Contact: environment@cisco.com |
Cisco and partner services offer a wide range of services to help accelerate your success in connecting Cisco 6000 Series Switches to the Nexus Hyperfabric cloud controller. Our innovative service offerings are delivered through a unique combination of people, processes, tools, and partners and are focused on helping you increase operational efficiency and improve your network control. Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric solution provides proactive support with the Cisco SMARTnet® service to help you resolve mission-critical problems with direct access at any time to Cisco network experts and award-winning resources. Spanning the entire network lifecycle, our service offerings help increase investment protection, optimize network operations, support migration operations, and strengthen your IT expertise.
For more information, please visit www.cisco.com/go/services.
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Try before you buy
Anyone with a Cisco ID or CCO ID may log into the Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric cloud controller at hyperfabric.cisco.com to request an organization identifier; they can then begin building network fabric blueprints for free.
For more information, visit: cisco.com/go/nexus-hyperfabric-ai.