The Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect is a core part of the Cisco Unified Computing System, providing both network connectivity and management capabilities for the system. The Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect provides the communication backbone and management connectivity for UCS B-series blade servers and UCS C-series rack servers.

Cisco UCS 6500 Series Fabric Interconnects currently include Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect. All servers attached to a Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect become part of a single, highly available management domain. In addition, by supporting a unified fabric, Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect provides both LAN and SAN connectivity for all servers within its domain.

The Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect supports multiple traffic classes over a lossless Ethernet fabric from the server through the fabric interconnect.

The Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect (UCSC-FI-6536) is a One-rack unit (1RU), top of rack (TOR), fixed-port data center platform that provides both network connectivity and management capabilities to the Cisco UCS system.

The fabric interconnect can provide Ethernet and Fibre Channel connectivity to the servers in the system. The servers connect to the fabric interconnect, and then to the LAN or SAN.

Cisco UCS Manager on UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect supports Cisco UCS X-Series Compute Nodes, B-Series Blade Servers and C-Series Rack Servers, Cisco UCS S-Series Storage Servers, as well as the associated storage resources and networks.

High availability and redundancy can be achieved by connecting a pair of fabric interconnects to each other through L1 or L2 ports in cluster mode configuration.

Each Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect offers the following features:

• Thirty-six QSFP28 ports capable of 100G including 4 unified ports (33-36). Ports also support:

  • Autonegotiating with peer devices to speeds of 100G, 40G, 25G, 10G, and 1G.

  • Port breakout is supported for Ethernet ports (1-32) and Unified ports (33-36).

    • Ethernet breakout is supported on switch ports 1 through 36 when each port is configured with a breakout cable.

      • The Dynamic Ethernet Breakout feature enables converting a standard Ethernet port to a breakout port on-the-fly so that you do not need to reboot the Fabric Interconnect. Dynamic Ethernet Breakout also supports converting breakout ports back to a standard Ethernet port without a reboot.

    • FC breakout is supported on ports 33 through 36 wherein each port is configured with a four-port breakout cable. For example 1/33/1, 1/33/2, 1/33/3, and 1/33/4 are the four FC breakout ports on the physical port 33.

      Note	Fibre Channel support is only available through the configuration of Unified Ports (33-36) as FC breakout port.

      • FC breakout ports support peer communication at fixed speeds of 8Gbs, 16 Gbps, and 32 Gbps.

      • All four FC breakout ports must be configured with the same speed. Mixed speeds on a QSFP port's FC breakout ports are not supported.

      • Using breakout ports enables the fabric interconnect to support the maximum 16 FC ports supported by Fibre Channel.

    Note	Converting from Ethernet to FC breakout ports, or FC breakout ports back to Ethernet, requires a reboot/reload after changing the breakout type. FCoE storage ports are not supported.

• One management port (one 10/100/1000BASE-T port)

• Two L1/L2 Ethernet RJ-45 ports for high availability or cluster configurations. Ethernet ports support 10/100/1000Mb speed.

• One console port (RS-232)

• One USB 3.0 port

• CPU: 4 Core, 1.8GHz, Intel 5th-Generation core processor

• Memory:

  • 32 GB DDR4 DIMMs

  • 128 GB M.2 SSD Flash Drive

  • 32 GB Boot Flash (16 MB primary, and 16 MB standby/golden)

This fabric interconnect includes the following user-replaceable components:

• Fan modules (6), each is a port-side exhaust fan module with dark grey latch coloring (UCS-FAN-6536).

• Power supply modules (2). One power supply module (PSU) is the active module for operations, and the second PSU is the standby for redundancy [1+1]) with the following choices:

  • 1100-W AC power supply with dark grey latch coloring (UCS-PSU-6536-AC)

  Note	All fan modules and power supplies must use the same airflow direction.

The following figure shows the fabric interconnect features on the port side of the chassis.

To determine which transceivers, adapters, and cables are support the fabric interconnect, see the Cisco Transceiver Modules Compatibility Information document.

The following figure shows the fabric interconnect features on the power supply side of the chassis.

The following figure shows the side of the chassis.

Plan to position the ports in a hot aisle so that fans and power supplies intake air from the cold aisle, blow the cool air through the fabric interconnect, and exhaust the heated air into the hot aisle.

The fan and power supply modules are field replaceable. You can replace one fan module or one power supply module during operations so long as the other modules are installed and operating. If you have only one power supply installed, you can install the replacement power supply in the open slot before removing the original power supply.

Note	All fan and power supply modules must have the same direction of airflow. Otherwise, the fabric interconnect can overheat and shut down.

Caution

Because fans and power supply modules have port-side exhaust airflow (blue coloring for fan modules), you must locate the ports in the hot aisle. If you locate the air intake in a hot aisle, the fabric interconnect can overheat and shut down.

Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnect provides both network connectivity and management capabilities to the Cisco UCS system. The fabric interconnect provides Ethernet and Fibre Channel to the servers in the system, the servers connect to the fabric interconnect, and then to the LAN or SAN.

Each Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnect runs Cisco UCS Manager to fully manage all Cisco UCS elements. The fabric interconnect supports 10/25 Gigabit ports in the fabric with 40/100 Gigabit uplink ports. High availability can be achieved when a Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnect is connected to another Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnect through the L1 or L2 port on each device.

Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnect consists of:

• Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnects

• Cisco UCS 64108 Fabric Interconnects

The Cisco UCS 6400 Series fabric interconnect supports Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers, UCS 5108 B-Series Server Chassis, C-Series Rack Servers, and UCS S-Series Storage Servers.

The Cisco UCS 64108 Fabric Interconnect is a 2 RU top-of-rack (TOR) switch that mounts in a standard 19-inch rack such as the Cisco R Series rack.

The high-density Cisco UCS 64108 Fabric Interconnect has 96 10/25 Gb SFP28 ports and 12 40/100 Gb QSFP28 ports. Each 40/100 Gb port can break out into 4 x 10/25 Gb uplink ports. Ports 1 - 16 are unified ports that support 10/25 GbE or 8/16/32G Fibre Channel speeds. Ports 89-96 support 1Gbps Ethernet speeds.

The Cisco UCS 64108 Fabric Interconnect supports either:

• Eight FCoE port channels

• Or Four SAN port channels

• or Four SAN port channels and four FCoE port channels

The Cisco UCS 64108 Fabric Interconnect also has one network management port, one RS-232 serial console port for setting the initial configuration, and one USB port for saving or loading configurations. The FI also includes L1/L2 ports for connecting two fabric interconnects in a high-availability configuration.

The Cisco UCS 64108 Fabric Interconnect also contains a CPU board that consists of:

• Intel Xeon Processor, 6 core

• 64 GB of RAM

• 8 MB of NVRAM (4 x NVRAM chips)

• 128 GB SSD (bootflash)

The Cisco UCS 64108 Fabric Interconnect has two power supplies (redundant as 1+1) and three fans (redundant as 2+1).

The Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect (FI) is a 1-RU top-of-rack switch that mounts in a standard 19-inch rack such as the Cisco R Series rack.

The Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect has 48 10/25 Gb SFP28 ports (16 unified ports) and 6 40/100 Gb QSFP28 ports. Each 40/100 Gb port can break out into 4 x 10/25 Gb uplink ports. The sixteen unified ports support 10/25 GbE or 8/16/32G Fibre Channel speeds.

Note	The Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect supported 8 unified ports (ports 1 - 8) with Cisco UCS Manager 4.0(1) and 4.0(2), but with release 4.0(4) and later it supports 16 unified ports (ports 1 - 16).

The Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect supports:

• Maximum of 8 FCoE port channels

• Or 4 SAN port channels

• Or a maximum of 8 SAN port channels and FCoE port channels (4 each)

The Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect also has one network management port, one console port for setting the initial configuration, and one USB port for saving or loading configurations. The FI also includes L1/L2 ports for connecting two fabric interconnects for high availability.

The Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect also contains a CPU board that consists of:

• Intel Xeon D-1528 v4 Processor, 1.6 GHz

• 64 GB of RAM

• 8 MB of NVRAM (4 x NVRAM chips)

• 128 GB SSD (bootflash)

The Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect chassis has two power supplies and four fans. Two of the fans provide front to rear airflow.

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects 9108 100G (Cisco UCS X-Series Direct) has eight ports that include:

• Ports 1 & 2 that are unified ports to manage all SAN features and configurations.

• The 100G Ethernet ports [1-8] can also be configured as 25Gx4 SFP28 compatible breakout ports or 4x10G ports, offering flexible networking solutions to accommodate a range of data center needs.

• The 32G Fibre Channel ports [1 & 2] can also be configured as 8Gx4 SFP28 compatible breakout ports offering flexible networking solutions to accommodate a range of data center needs.

Note	Migration of any previous generation Fabric Interconnects to the Cisco UCS 9108 100G Intelligent Fabric Module is currently not supported.

Ports on the Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects can be configured to carry either Ethernet or Fibre Channel traffic. You can configure only ports 33-36 to carry Fibre Channel traffic. The ports cannot be used by a Cisco UCS domain until you configure them.

Ports on the Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects can be configured to carry either Ethernet or Fibre Channel traffic. You can configure only ports 1-16 to carry Fibre Channel traffic. The ports cannot be used by a Cisco UCS domain until you configure them.

Note

The Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect supported 8 unified ports (ports 1 - 8) with Cisco UCS Manager 4.0(1) and 4.0(2), but with Release 4.0(4) and later releases, it supports 16 unified ports (ports 1 - 16). When you configure a port on a Fabric Interconnect, the administrative state is automatically set to enabled. If the port is connected to another device, this may cause traffic disruption. The port can be disabled and enabled after it has been configured.

The following table summarizes the port support for third, fourth, fifth generation of Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects, and Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects 9108 100G.