Cisco Nexus N3K-C3432D-S Switch

Cisco Nexus 3400-S overview

The Cisco Nexus 3400-S is the first 400G capable switch in the Nexus 3000 portfolio with 50 Gbps PAM4 Serial-Deserializers (SerDes), designed for data centers with industry-leading performance-per-watt power efficiency at low latency, offering leading analytics.

Main benefits of the Cisco Nexus 3400-S switches:

●      With the 12.8-Tbps ASIC, the Cisco Nexus 3432D-S provides 32 ports of 400G, allowing customers to grow at scale with fewer numbers of switches in their fabric, simplifying management and reducing cost and number of hops.

●      At 400G, the Cisco Nexus 3400-S offers the lowest latency in the industry at high power efficiency.

●      Cisco Nexus 3400-S switches enable deep network analytics, offering per-flow monitoring, queue forensics, and drop-packet forensics to help monitor customer networks.

Cisco Nexus 3432D-S switch

The Cisco Nexus 3432D-S (Figure 1) is a Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable – Double Density (QSFP-DD) switch with 32 ports that are backward-compatible with QSFP+, QSFP28, and QSFP56.

The Cisco Nexus 3432D-S has the following hardware configuration:

●      32 fixed 400-Gigabit Ethernet QSFP-DD ports with backward compatibility for QSFP56, QSFP28, and QSFP+

●      Beacon LED

●      Status LED

●      Dual-redundant power supplies

●      Redundant (5+1) fans

●      Two 100/1000-Mbps SFP ports (in front ports 33 and 34)

●      One RS-232 console port

●      One RJ45 and one SFP management port

●      One USB port

The Cisco Nexus 3432D-S supports both forward and reverse (port-side intake and port-side exhaust) airflow schemes with AC power inputs. Colored handles on each fan or power supply clearly indicate the airflow direction, as seen in Figures 2 and 3.

Cisco Nexus 3432D-S with Blue Handles Indicating Port-Side Exhaust 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 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 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.

The Cisco Nexus 3400-S provides:

Wire-rate layer 2 and 3 switching on all ports, with up to 25.6 Terabits per second (Tbps) with 7.2 Bpps at ingress and 10 Bpps at egress^[2].

Robust programmability, with support for Cisco NX-API, Linux containers, XML, and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) APIs, Python.

High performance and scalability, with a four-core CPU, 16 GB of DRAM, and 70 MB of dynamic buffer allocation, making the switch excellent for massively scalable data centers and big data applications.

Flexibility

●      The Cisco Nexus 3432D-S supports break out for 2x200/50G, 4x100/50G/25G, and 8x50G, supporting up to 128 ports of 100G or up to 168 ports of 50G.

●      Both fiber and copper cabling solutions are available for 10-, 25-, 40-, 50-, 100-, and 400-Gbps connectivity, including an Active Optical Cable (AOC) and a Direct-Attached Cable (DAC).

High availability

●      Virtual Port Channel (vPC) technology provides layer 2 multipath through the elimination of Spanning Tree Protocol (STP). 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 512-way [1] 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 patching2.

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

Purpose-built Cisco 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 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 and is based on the popular Wireshark open-source network protocol analyzer.

●      Complete layer 3 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) and Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS).

Table 1.        Software licensing for the Cisco Nexus 3432D-S switch

Product specifications

The following tables list the product specifications, software features, and management and standards support for the Cisco Nexus 3400-S platforms.

Table 2.        Product specifications

Table 3.        Hardware specifications for Nexus 3400-S platforms

Transceiver and cabling options

The Cisco Nexus 3400-S are Quad Small Form factor pluggable – Double Density (QSFP-DD) platforms that support the full range of optical transceivers, starting from Active Optical Cables (AOC), Direct Attach Cables (DAC).

For details about the optical modules available and the minimum software release required for each supported optical module, visit here.

Table 4.        Software features common to Nexus 3000 series switches

Table 5.        Management and standards support

Regulatory standards compliance

The following table summarizes regulatory standards compliance for the Cisco Nexus 3000 Series.

Table 6.        Regulatory standards compliance: Safety and EMC

Ordering information

The following table provides ordering information for Cisco Nexus 3432D-S Switch.

Table 7.        Ordering information

For more information

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