Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Fabric Manager Software Configuration Guide, NX-OS 4.0 (OL-16598-01, June 2008)

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Nexus 5000 Series Switch Fabric Manager Software Configuration Guide
OL-16598-01
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Product Overview
The Nexus 5000 Series is a family of top-of-rack switches for the data center. The Nexus 5020 switch is
a 10-Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switch with 1.04 Tbps switching
throughput. The Nexus 5020 provides low-latency wire-speed switching for up to 52 10-Gigabit Ethernet
ports.
The Nexus 5020 switch supports FCoE to provide data center I/O consolidation (IOC). Optional Fibre
Channel-capable expansion modules provide four or eight native Fibre Channel SAN interfaces.
This chapter describes the Nexus 5000 Series switches and includes the following sections:
• New Technologies in the Nexus 5000 Series, page 1-1
• Nexus 5000 Series Switch Hardware, page 1-3
• Nexus 5000 Series Switch Software, page 1-4
• Typical Deployment Topologies, page 1-8
• Supported Standards, page 1-11
New Technologies in the Nexus 5000 Series
Nexus 5000 Series switches introduce several new technologies, which are described in the following
sections:
• Fibre Channel over Ethernet, page 1-1
• I/O Consolidation, page 1-2
• Virtual Interfaces, page 1-3
Fibre Channel over Ethernet
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) provides a method of encapsulating Fibre Channel traffic over a
physical Ethernet link. FCoE frames use a unique Ethertype so that FCoE traffic and standard Ethernet
traffic can be carried on the same link.
Fibre Channel traffic requires a lossless transport layer. Native Fibre Channel implements lossless
service using a buffer-to-buffer credit system. For FCoE traffic, the Ethernet link must provide lossless
service.
Ethernet links on Nexus 5000 Series switches provide two mechanisms to ensure lossless transport for
FCoE traffic: link-level flow control and priority flow control.