Cisco Nexus N3K-C3264C-E Switch

Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches overview

The Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches are a comprehensive portfolio of 1,10/25,40,50,100G Gigabit Ethernet switches built from a Switch-on-a-Chip (SoC) architecture. Introduced in April 2011, this series of switches provides line-rate Layer 2 and 3 performance and is suitable for Top-of-the-Rack (ToR) architecture.

Cisco Nexus 3264C-E product overview

The Cisco Nexus 3264C-E switch is a dense, high-performance, power-efficient, 100-Gbps switch designed for the data center. This 2-Rack-Unit (2RU) model offers wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching on all ports with latency of 450ns. Cisco Nexus 3264C-E introduces MACsec to the 3200 family, offering 16 ports of MACsec.

The Cisco Nexus 3264C-E supports both forward and reverse (port-side exhaust and port-side intake) airflow schemes with AC and DC power inputs.

The Cisco Nexus 3264C-E (Figure 1) is a Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable (QSFP) switch with 64 QSFP28 ports. Each QSFP28 port can operate at 10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 Gbps, up to a maximum of 128 x 25-Gbps ports.

Cisco Nexus 3264C-E switch

The Cisco Nexus 3264C-E switch has the following hardware configuration:

●      64 fixed 100-Gigabit Ethernet QSFP28 ports

●      16 fixed MACsec enabled ports

●      Beacon LED

●      Environment LED

●      Status LED

●      Lane-selected LED

●      Dual redundant power supplies

●      Redundant (3+1) fans

●      2 1/10G SFP+ ports (port 65 and port 66 in-front)

●      1 RS-232 console port

●      1 RJ45 and 1 SFP Management port

●      1 USB port

Colored handles on each fan or power supply clearly indicate the airflow direction, as seen in Figures 2 and 3.

Cisco Nexus 3264C-E with red handles indicating port-side intake airflow

Cisco NX-OS Software overview

Cisco NX-OS is a data center-class operating system built with modularity, resiliency, and serviceability at its foundation. Cisco NX-OS Software helps ensure continuous availability and sets the standard for mission-critical data center environments. The self-healing and highly modular design of Cisco NX-OS makes zero-impact operations a reality and provides exceptional operational flexibility.

Focused on the requirements of the data center, Cisco NX-OS Software provides a robust and comprehensive feature set that meets the networking requirements of present and future data centers. With an XML interface and a Command-Line Interface (CLI) like that of Cisco IOS Software, Cisco NX-OS provides state-of-the-art implementations of relevant networking standards as well as a variety of true data center-class Cisco innovations.

Main benefits

The Cisco Nexus 3264C-E provides the following:

●      Wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching on all ports [1] at up to 12.8 terabits per second and up to 4.3 billion packets per second.

●      Robust programmability with support for Cisco NX-API, Linux containers, XML and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) APIs, the OpenStack plug-in, Python, and Puppet and Chef configuration and automation tools.

●      High performance and scalability with a 4-core CPU, 16 GB of DRAM, and 42 MB of dynamic buffer allocation, making the switch excellent for massively scalable data centers and big data application.

●      Flexibility:

◦    The QSFP28 port can be configured to work as 4 x 25-Gbps ports, 2x50-Gbps offering deployment flexibility, with up to a maximum of 128 x 25-Gbps ports.

◦    Both fiber and copper cabling solutions are available for 10-, 25-, 40-, 50-, and 100-Gbps connectivity, including Active Optical Cable (AOC) and Direct-Attached Cable (DAC).

●      High availability:

◦    Virtual PortChannel (vPC) technology provides Layer 2 multipath through the elimination of Spanning Tree Protocol. It also enables fully utilized bisectional bandwidth and simplified Layer 2 logical topologies without the need to change the existing management and deployment models.

◦    The 64-way Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP) routing enables the use of Layer 3 fat-tree designs. This feature allows organizations to prevent network bottlenecks, increase resiliency, and add capacity with little network disruption.

◦    Advanced reboot capabilities include hot and cold patching and fast reboot capabilities.

◦    The switch uses hot-swappable Power-Supply Units (PSUs) and fans.

●      Purpose-built NX-OS operating system with comprehensive, proven innovations:

◦    Power-On Auto Provisioning (POAP) enables touchless bootup and configuration of the switch, drastically reducing provisioning time.

◦    Cisco IOS Embedded Event Manager (EEM) and Python scripting enable automation and remote operations in the data center.

◦    Advanced buffer monitoring reports real-time buffer utilization per port and per queue, which allows organizations to monitor traffic bursts and application traffic patterns.

◦    Ethanalyzer is a built-in packet analyzer for monitoring and troubleshooting control-plane traffic that is based on the popular Wireshark open-source network protocol analyzer.

◦    Complete Layer 3 unicast and multicast routing protocol suites are supported, including Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Routing Information Protocol version 2 (RIPv2), Protocol Independent Multicast Sparse Mode (PIM-SM), Source-Specific Multicast (SSM), and Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP).

Table 1.        Software licensing for Cisco Nexus 3264C-E

Transceiver and cabling options

The Cisco Nexus 3264C-E has 64 QSFP28 ports. QSFP28 technology allows a smooth transition from 40 to 100 Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure in data centers. Each of the Cisco Nexus 3264C-E switch’s QSFP28 ports can operate in either native 100-Gigabit Ethernet mode or 4 x 25, 2 x 50-Gigabit Ethernet mode. This switch supports both fiber and copper cabling solutions for these two modes.

For low-cost cabling, copper-based 40-Gbps twin-axial cables can be used, and for longer cable reaches, short-reach optical transceivers are excellent. Connectivity can be established from the QSFP28 ports to 10-Gigabit Ethernet switches or hosts using a splitter cable that has an Enhanced QSFP (QSFP+) transceiver on one end and four SFP+ transceivers on the other end. Similar capability can be achieved on the fiber solution by using QSFP+ SR4 transceivers on both ends and procuring third-party fiber splitter MPO-to-LC cables. Table 2 lists the transceiver types supported.

Table 2.        Cisco Nexus 3264C-E QSFP28 transceiver support

Product specifications

Table 3 lists the product specifications for the Cisco Nexus 3264C-E switch.

Table 3.        Cisco Nexus 3264C-E switch specifications

Table 4.        Cisco Nexus 3264C-E Hardware specifications

Table 5 lists the MIBs and standards supported by Cisco Nexus 3200 platform

Table 5.        Management and standards support

Software requirements

Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches are supported by Cisco NX-OS Software Release 5.0 and later. Cisco NX-OS interoperates with any networking OS, including Cisco IOS Software, that conforms to the networking standards mentioned in this data sheet.

Regulatory standards compliance

Table 6 summarizes regulatory standards compliance for the Cisco Nexus 3000 Series.

Table 6.        Regulatory standards compliance: Safety and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC)

Ordering information

Table 7 provides ordering information for the Cisco Nexus 3264C-E switch.

Table 7.        Ordering information

For more information

For more information, please visit https://www.cisco.com/go/nexus3000. For information about Cisco Nexus Data Broker, please visit https://www.cisco.com/go/nexusdatabroker.