Cisco Fabric Extender Technology (FEX Technology)

Cisco Fabric Extender (FEX)Technology delivers an extensible and a scalable fabric that provides a flexible and comprehensive solution as part of Cisco Unified Fabric. FEX Technology:

• Allows the switching fabric access layer to extend and expand all the way to the server hypervisor as your business grows
• Helps enable operational simplicity at scale, with a single point of management and policy enforcement on the access parent switch across more than 1000 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports

Based on the emerging standard IEEE 802.1BR (Bridge Port Extension), Cisco FEX Technology includes:

• Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders (FEX): Extends the fabric to top-of-the-rack (TOR)
• Cisco UCS 2200 Series Fabric Extenders: Extends the fabric to the Cisco UCS Blade Chassis
• Cisco Adapter Fabric Extender (Adapter FEX): Extends the fabric into the server
• Cisco Data Center Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX): Extends the fabric to the virtual machines

Main Benefits:

Simplified operations

• Implements a single point of management from the access layer parent switches, Cisco Nexus 5000 and Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches
• Consolidates multiple 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) adapters with a 10 GE adapter
• Reduces cabling, network interface cards (NICs), power consumption, and operating expense
• Helps to enable partitioning of the 10 GE server adapter or switch into multiple connections (vNICs or virtual line cards)
• Provides dedicated network bandwidth to individual applications or virtual machines

Architectural flexibility

• Common, scalable, and adaptive architecture across data center racks and points of delivery (PoD)
• Supports various server options, connectivity options, physical topologies and evolving needs
• Choice of parent switches and adapter vendors, to work across Cisco platforms and third-party architectures

Scalability

• Homogeneous, consistent policies across large number of ports
• Over 1500 1 GE ports, over 1000 10 GE physical ports, and more virtual ports managed from a single access parent switch
• Scalable Gigabit and 10 GE server access, with no reliance on Spanning Tree Protocol
• Low predictable latency at scale

Cisco SingleConnect Technology

Cisco SingleConnect Technology is an easy, intelligent, and efficient way to connect and manage computing in the data center. SingleConnect is one connection for:

• Rack servers and blade servers
• LAN, SAN, and systems management
• Physical servers and virtual machines