Cisco Nexus N6K-C6001-64T Switch

Product Overview

In today’s data centers, virtualization deployments have become commonplace, and this trend is increasing rapidly with the availability of 10 Gigabit Ethernet servers at attraction prices. The combination of increased adoption of these servers and applications with higher bandwidth requirements is increasing the need for dense 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet switching. Moreover, data center architecture is evolving as customers seek to build large-scale nonblocking fabrics to accommodate different applications.

The Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch is part of a robust fabric that can scale significantly to meet data center growth, delivering architectural flexibility that enables any data center to be a more agile, cost-effective, and efficient environment. The Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch is an important component of the Cisco Unified Data Center architecture, complementing existing Cisco Nexus switches. The Cisco Nexus 6001 is an energy-efficient switch that offers high port density in one rack unit (1RU), supports 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), provides integrated Layer 2 and 3 features at wire speed, and offers low latency of approximately 1 microsecond for any packet size. With a choice of front-to-back (port-side exhaust) and back-to-front (port-side intake) airflow options, the switch is designed for a broad range of traditional data center and large-scale virtualized cloud deployments.

The Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch runs the industry-leading Cisco NX-OS Software operating system, providing customers with features and capabilities that are widely deployed around the world. Cisco NX-OS Software is a purpose-built data center operating system designed for performance, resiliency, scalability, manageability, and programmability. It meets Ethernet and storage networking requirements, providing a robust and comprehensive feature set that can meet the demanding requirements of virtualization and automation in present and future data centers. The Cisco enhanced fabric solution allows the transparent integration of the virtual and physical devices on a unified network. In addition, the comprehensive Cisco NX-OS service set can be used to create unique innovations for customized solutions.

The Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch comes in these configurations:

●   Cisco Nexus 6001P: The Cisco Nexus 6001P (Figure 1) is a 1RU, 10- and 40- Gigabit Ethernet switch offering wire-speed performance for up to sixty-four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports (using Quad Small Form‑Factor Pluggable [QSFP] breakout cables) for Ethernet and FCoE traffic, with an overall throughput of 1.28 terabits per second (Tbps). The Cisco Nexus 6001P offers 48 fixed 1/10 Gigabit Ethernet Enhanced Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP+) ports and four 40 Gigabit Ethernet QSFP+ ports. Each 40 Gigabit Ethernet port can be split into four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports using a QSFP+ breakout cable. The Cisco Nexus 6001P delivers low port-to-port latency of approximately 1 microsecond and low jitter independent of packet size using cut-through switching architecture and with features enabled.

●   Cisco Nexus 6001T: The Cisco Nexus 6001T (Figure 2) is a 1RU 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet switch offering wire-speed performance for up to sixty-four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports (using Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable [QSFP] breakout cables) for Ethernet and FCoE traffic. It has an overall throughput of 1.28 terabits per second (Tbps). The Cisco Nexus 6001T offers 48 fixed 1/10G BASE-T and four 40 Gigabit Ethernet QSFP+ ports. Each 40 Gigabit Ethernet port can be split into four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports using a QSFP breakout cable. The Cisco Nexus 6001T delivers low port-to-port latency of approximately 3.3 microsecond and low jitter independent of packet size using cut-through switching architecture and with features enabled. QSFP interface supports 1 microsecond latency. The hardware of 6001T is capable of supporting FCoE over 10G BASE-T interface The Cisco Nexus 6001T can be deployed in multiple scenarios - direct-attach 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet server-access and high‑density fabric extender aggregation deployments, leaf and spine designs, and compact aggregation - to build scalable Cisco Unified Fabric across a diverse set of physical and virtual server environments in the data center.

The Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch is well-suited to meet the challenging demands of virtualized and cloud-based deployments. The switch is designed with the Cisco high-performance application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and is excellent for integrating and connecting a virtual environment to the high-performance servers in a data center. The Nexus 6001 switch is excellent for top-of-rack (ToR) deployments such as direct-attach 10 Gigabit Ethernet server-access and fabric extender aggregation deployments and leaf and spine designs to build scalable Cisco Unified Fabric in data centers. This platform can be deployed in the middle of the row (MoR, in server racks) or at the end of the row (EoR, in network racks) in a data center.

Features and Benefits

The following are some of the primary features of the Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch:

●   Optimization for virtualization and cloud deployments: Today, high-performance servers deployed in the cloud can support many more virtual machines and workloads than ever before. The requirement to deploy new servers on demand puts additional strain on the network fabric. The Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch addresses this challenge by providing scalability and performance, making it an excellent platform for meeting current and future needs.

●   Density and resilience: Built for today’s data centers, the switches are designed just like the servers they support. Ports and power connections are at the rear, close to server ports, helping keep cable lengths as short as possible and delivering to rack servers benefits traditionally offered only on blade servers. Hot‑swappable power and fan modules can be accessed from the front panel, where status lights offer an at-a-glance view of switch operation. Front-to-back or back-to-front cooling is consistent with server designs, supporting efficient data center hot- and cold-aisle designs. Serviceability is enhanced with all customer-replaceable units accessible from the front panel.

●   Energy efficiency: The Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch helps data centers operate within their space, power, and cooling parameters while reducing their carbon footprints. The switch power supplies are also capable of maintaining 90 percent efficiency at load conditions of as low as 25 percent utilization. This capability allows the switch to make efficient use of power while still being appropriately sized to support the conditions of a full system load.

●   Low latency: The Cisco Nexus 6001 with cut-through switching supports approximately 1 microsecond of port-to-port latency for any packet size with features enabled.

●   Intelligent Cisco Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) and Encapsulated SPAN (ERSPAN): SPAN and ERSPAN can be used for troubleshooting and robust monitoring of traffic. The SPAN and ERSPAN capabilities in the Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch are nondisruptive, with only extra bandwidth capacity used for SPAN and ERSPAN traffic. Enhancements include more efficient allocation of bandwidth to SPAN and ERSPAN traffic whereby any fabric bandwidth not used for data traffic can be allocated to SPAN or ERSPAN traffic. The switch can support up to 31 line-rate SPAN and ERSPAN sessions.

●   Flexible buffer management: The Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch supports a 25-MB packet buffer shared by every 3 ports of 40 Gigabit Ethernet or every 12 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The flexible buffer management capability on the Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch allows dynamic tuning of the shared and dedicated buffer size in the event of congestion.

●   Multicast enhancements: The Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch supports line-rate Layer 2 and 3 multicast throughput for all frame sizes. It offers optimized multicast replication through the fabric and at the egress point. Support is provided for 32,000 multicast routes and for Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping tables in hardware. Multicast enhancements include flow-based hashing for multicast traffic over a PortChannel and enhanced Bidirectional Protocol-Independent Multicast (Bidir-PIM) support. The switch also supports IP-based forwarding for IGMP snooping.

Applications

The Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch supports a number of application scenarios, making it a versatile data center option.

Fabric Extender Architecture: High-Density Fabric Extender Aggregator

Cisco Fabric Extender Technology (FEX Technology) enables you to build a single, modular fabric that extends from Cisco Nexus switches, to Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) servers, to adapters (Cisco Adapter FEX), and to virtual machines (Cisco Data Center VM-FEX). The Cisco FEX technology is based on the emerging standard IEEE 802.1br. Designing the network using Cisco FEX technology provides flexibility, reduced cabling infrastructure, and a single point of management, helping customers scale their networks. When Nexus 6001 Switches are part of a fabric that includes Cisco Nexus 2200 platforms, use the Cisco Nexus 2200 platform fabric extenders in single or dual connected mode using enhanced virtual port channel (vPC+) technology to two upstream Cisco Nexus 6001 Switches. Servers or end hosts can connect to single or dual Cisco Nexus 2200 platform fabric extenders using network interface card (NIC) teaming when the parent Cisco Nexus 6001 has vPC+ enabled.

Following are some common fabric extender Cisco Nexus 2000 and 6000 Series deployment options:

●   Rack servers with 100 Megabit Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, or 10 Gigabit Ethernet NICs; the fabric extender can be physically located at the top of the rack, and the Cisco Nexus 6000 Series Switch can reside in the middle or at the end of the row, or the fabric extender and the Cisco Nexus 6000 Series Switch can both reside in the middle or at the end of the row

●   Mixed Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet environments in which rack servers are running at either speed in the same rack or in adjacent racks

●   10 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE deployments using servers with converged network adapters (CNAs) for unified fabric environments with the Cisco Nexus 2232PP 10GE Fabric Extender

●   1/10GBASE-T server connectivity with ease of migration from 1 to 10GBASE-T and effective reuse of structured cabling

●   Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet blade servers with pass-through blades

●   Low-latency, high-performance computing environments

●   Virtualized access

In addition to these options, the Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch provides unique value as a high-density fabric extender aggregation platform. For example, the Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch can be used in conjunction with the Cisco Nexus 2248PQ, 2232PP, and 2248TP Fabric Extenders as a high-density switching system, consolidating 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections in a single management plane. In addition, a variety of blade fabric extender options can be aggregated into a Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch using 10 Gigabit Ethernet, providing a single point of management for blade server deployments.

Table 1 lists the fabric extenders that are supported with the Cisco Nexus 6001. Please refer to the Cisco Nexus 2200 platform data sheets and release notes for more information about the products.

Table 1.       Supported Fabric Extenders

Large-Scale Fabric (Layer 2 and 3): Leaf and Spine Architecture

Data center designs are evolving, with customers seeking to build large-scale nonblocking fabrics to accommodate different applications, creating patterns of heavy east-west and north-south traffic. The Cisco Nexus 6001 is well suited as a leaf or spine node in a Layer 2 or 3 fabric design. Leaf and spine layer designs using high-density and low-latency switches lead to flatter network architecture, allowing connections scaling from hundreds to more than 10,000 servers with high bidirectional bandwidth, and helping ensure low-latency fabric with a low hop count. The spine switches create a nonblocking, low-latency fabric, forwarding packets between leafs. The leaf switches provide connectivity to servers. Use of a highly meshed architecture helps ensure the highest possible network availability with little impact on customer traffic in the event of a failure. The Cisco Nexus 6001 can be deployed as a Layer 2 or Layer 3 spine or leaf switch, providing a high degree of design flexibility.

Multihop FCoE

Cisco Unified Fabric combines data center and storage networks to deliver a single high-performance, highly available, and scalable network. With the Cisco Nexus 6001, Cisco can support end-to-end data center convergence, from the server to storage, by delivering multihop FCoE capability in the data center. The FCoE capability complements the existing FCoE function on the Cisco Nexus 5500 switch platform. With this broad selection of standards-based FCoE switches, Cisco provides unified fabric support to both the access and core network layers, supporting all storage traffic (FCoE, Small Computer System Interface over IP [iSCSI], and network-attached storage [NAS]) over simplified infrastructure based on lossless 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet. The Cisco Nexus 6000 Series Switches are the industry’s first to provide 40-Gbps FCoE support, surpassing the 16-Gbps Fibre Channel capability.

High-Performance Computing

The Cisco Nexus 6001 can be deployed as a high-density Small Form-Factor (SFF) access-layer switch to consolidate a large number of 10 Gigabit Ethernet servers in deployments that call for only a small number of hops from the server to the upstream network to reduce latency. The Cisco Nexus 6001 has a high density of 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports per rack unit, approximately 1 microsecond of latency port to port for any packet size, integrated line-rate Layer 2 and 3 features, scalability, and integrated data analytics with programmability. It addresses the needs of high-performance computing (HPC) and high-frequency trading (HFT) environments, for which InfiniBand solutions lack management visibility and high performance of bulk data transfers across traditional applications.

The capability of the Cisco Nexus 6001 to function in all these capacities helps protect investments in the data center with a deployment model in which additional features can be enabled as they are needed.

Cisco NX-OS Software Overview

Cisco NX-OS Software is a purpose-built data center operating system designed for performance, resiliency, scalability, manageability, and programmability. Cisco NX-OS meets Ethernet and storage networking requirements, providing a robust and comprehensive feature set that can meet the demanding requirements of virtualization and automation in present and future data centers. Cisco’s enhanced fabric solution allows the transparent integration of the virtual and physical devices on a unified network. In addition, users can use the comprehensive Cisco NX-OS service set to create unique innovations for customized solutions. With its MIBs, native XML interface, and command-line interface (CLI) like that of Cisco IOS Software, Cisco NX-OS provides drastically simplified management for the devices in which it runs.

For a complete list of all the features and benefits of Cisco NX-OS Software, please see http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/iosswrel/ps9494/ps9372/data_sheet_c78-652063.html.

Cisco NX-OS Software Packaging for Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch

The software packaging for the Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch offers flexibility and a comprehensive feature set while being consistent with Cisco Nexus access switches. The default system software has a comprehensive Layer 2 feature set with comprehensive security and management features. To enable Layer 3 IP unicast and multicast routing functions, additional licenses need to be installed.

Table 2 lists the software packaging and licensing available.

Table 2.       Software Packaging and Licensing

Cisco ONE Software

Licenses can be purchased individually for each feature as shown in Table 2 or through
Cisco ONE Software for Data Center Networking which is available for the Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch.

Cisco ONE Software provides a new way for customers to purchase, consume, and use our infrastructure software. It offers a simplified consumption model focused on common customer scenarios for the data center, WAN, and LAN.

Cisco ONE Software and services provide customers with four main benefits:

●   Software suites that address typical customer use scenarios at an attractive price

●   Investment protection of software purchases through software services-enabled license portability

●   Access to ongoing innovation and new technology with Cisco Software Support Service (SWSS)

●   Flexible licensing models to smoothly distribute the customer's software spending over time

For ordering information for Cisco ONE Software for the Cisco Nexus 6001 Switch, please click here.

Cisco Prime Data Center Network Manager

Cisco Prime DCNM provides LAN and SAN management capabilities for the Cisco Nexus and Cisco MDS 9500 Families. Cisco Prime DCNM provides a GUI that reduces OpEx compared to traditional CLI methods and allows efficient operation control, monitoring, provisioning, and troubleshooting for your Cisco NX-OS devices. The main features include:

●   Unified fabric visibility and topology display with VMware vSphere integration shows connectivity from the virtual machine to the VMware ESX host and to the switch and the storage array.

●   Event aggregation and filtering helps you quickly find the information you need and identify network problems.

●   Deployment wizards and user-modifiable templates help implement best practices.

●   RBAC secures devices and provides appropriate delegation.

●   Integrated domain dashboards, health monitoring, reporting, change tracking, and user auditing provides comprehensive management capabilities.

●   Trend monitoring of ports and traffic allow you to optimize your existing resources and anticipate new resource requirements.

Specifications

Table 3 lists the specifications for the Cisco Nexus 6001. Please check software release notes for feature support information.

Table 3.       Product Specifications

Power Supply

Table 4 lists the power supply properties of the Cisco Nexus 6001.

Table 4.       Power Supply Properties

Environment

Table 5 lists the environment properties of the Cisco Nexus 6001.

Table 5.       Environment Properties

For the latest software release information and recommendations, please see the product bulletin at http://www.cisco.com/go/nexus6000.

Regulatory Standards Compliance

Table 6 summarizes regulatory standards compliance for the Cisco Nexus 6001.

Table 6.       Regulatory Standards Compliance: Safety and EMC

Cisco Nexus 6001 Transceiver and Cabling Options

The Cisco Nexus 6001 supports a wide variety of 1, 10, and 40 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity options. Table 7 lists the transceivers supported for 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, and Table 8 lists the 40 Gigabit Ethernet QSFP+ transceivers supported.

Table 7.       Cisco Nexus 6001 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet SFP+ Transceiver Support Matrix

Table 8.       Cisco Nexus 6001 40 Gigabit Ethernet QSFP+ Transceiver Support Matrix

The platform supports an innovative Twinax copper cabling solution that connects to standard QSFP connectors for in-rack use, and optical cabling for longer cable runs (Table 9).

For in-rack or adjacent-rack cabling, the Cisco Nexus 6001 supports QSFP+ direct-attach 40 Gigabit Ethernet copper cables, an innovative solution that integrates transceivers with Twinax cables into an energy-efficient, low‑cost, and low-latency solution. QSFP+ direct-attach 40 Gigabit Twinax copper cables use only 1.5 watt (W) of power per transceiver and introduce approximately 0.1 microsecond of latency per link.

For longer cable runs, the Cisco Nexus 6001 supports multimode, short-reach optical QSFP+ transceivers. These optical transceivers use approximately 1.5W per transceiver and have a latency of approximately 0.1 microsecond.

Table 9.       Cisco Nexus 6001 Cabling Support Matrix

Ordering Information

Table 10 presents ordering information for the Cisco Nexus 6001 platform. Note that you can order the Cisco Nexus 2200 Series Fabric Extenders either separately or along with the Cisco Nexus 6001 platform.

Table 10.     Ordering Information

More Information

●   Cisco Nexus 6000 Series Switches: http://www.cisco.com/go/nexus6000

●   Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders: http://www.cisco.com/go/nexus2000

●   Cisco NX-OS Software: http://www.cisco.com/go/nxos