Cisco continues its Unified Fabric innovations with the introduction of next-generation Cisco Nexus 7000 platform hardware. With this release, Cisco offers greater architectural flexibility and revolutionary scale to meet requirements of the next-generation data centers. IT organizations globally can gain operational efficiency and agility, and increase business innovation and differentiation.
This product bulletin introduces Cisco Nexus® 7000 next-generation hardware and Cisco® NX-OS Software Release 6.0 for Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches (Figure 1). It summarizes the new features offered.
Figure 1. Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches
Cisco Nexus 7000 Next-Generation Hardware
The next-generation hardware on the Cisco Nexus 7000 platform includes the following.
• Cisco Nexus 7000 48 Port 1/10GbE, SFP/SFP+ Module (F2-Series)
Cisco Nexus 7000 9-slot chassis along with Fabric 2 module is supported on Cisco NX-OS Software Release 5.2 or later. Support for Fabric 2 modules 7010 and 7018 chassis, along with F2 module, is introduced in NX-OS Software Release 6.0.
Cisco Nexus 7000 48 Port 1/10 GbE, SFP/SFP+ F2-Series Module
The Cisco Nexus 7000 48-Port 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet F2-Series Module (referred to as the Cisco Nexus 7000 F2-Series Module) offers outstanding flexibility and wire-rate performance on each port. The next-generation Nexus 7000 platform comes to life with the F2-Series Modules, which deliver unmatched performance with Layer 2 and Layer 3 feature sets for the data center.
The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Fabric-2 Modules for the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series chassis are separate fabric modules that provide parallel fabric channels to each I/O and supervisor module slot. Up to five simultaneously active fabric modules work together delivering up to 550 Gbps per slot. Through the parallel forwarding architecture, a system capacity of more than 15 Tbps is achieved with the five fabric modules. The fabric module provides the central switching element for fully distributed forwarding on the I/O modules.
• High availability and redundancy: The fabrics support multilevel redundancy, where all available fabrics are active, and provide redundancy for all other fabric modules. All I/O module slots receive a fair share of the total fabric bandwidth, helping to ensure lossless forwarding in the event of failover.
• Scalable fabric: The combined fabric modules deliver 10 channels per I/O module and five channels per supervisor module, for a scalable capacity of more than 15 Tbps for forwarding performance. This can be increased as a company's needs grow.
• Non-disruptive addition and removal of fabric modules: The switch capacity can scale with the addition of modules, with transparent upgrades for continuous operations.
• Arbitrated crossbar for unicast: Class-of-service-aware forwarding is delivered in a fully distributed forwarding system that allows future enhancements to Ethernet to support unified I/O.
• Virtual output queing (VOQ): In conjunction with the supervisor module, VOQ provides a quality-of-service (QoS) aware lossless fabric, avoiding the problems associated with head-of-line blocking.
• Multistage crossbar fabric: System forwarding performance is enhanced by a combination of local fabric switching between ports on the same module and centralized forwarding through the fabric for ports on different modules.
• Superframing and frame segmentation: Crossbar efficiency is optimized by the use of superframing and frame segmentation to provide deterministic latency and throughput. ID LED: Using the beacon feature, the administrator can clearly identify the chassis and fabric module.
Software Support
Cisco NX-OS Software Release 6.0 supports all the software features previously supported on the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches up through Cisco NX-OS Software Release 5.2. Cisco NX-OS 6.0 is compatible using In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU) with Releases 5.2 or higher. In addition, Cisco NX-OS 6.0 supports the new software features described in Table 4.
For more detailed information about features and ISSU, refer to the Cisco NX-OS 6.0 release notes (see "For More Information" at the end of this document).
Table 1. New Software Features in Cisco NX-OS Release 6.0
Software Features
Description
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) best path as-path multipath-relax
When BGP multi-pathing is enabled, BGP load-balances user traffic within a single autonomous system (AS). The criteria are that all attributes must match (weight, AS P path, etc). However when a device is multi-homed to multiple AS(es), BGP cannot load balance traffic between the two AS(es) by default. In order to enable load-balancing of traffic among the multi-homed AS(es), the "bgp bestpath as-path multipath-relax" feature needs to be applied. The criteria required for this is that the AS-path length should be equal.
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
• Per-community SNMP object identifier (OID) access restriction: Provides fine granularity for role-based access control (RBAC) to control access at any OID level.
• Tunnel MIB: Addition of IP-TUNNEL-MIB.
Layer 2 Protocol support for the F2-Series 48-Port 1/10 GbE Module
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), (Multiple Spanning Tree (MST) and RPVST+), virtual PortChannel (vPC), Link Aggregate Control Protocol (LACP) (up to 16 total links, including active and hot-standby), VLAN Trunk Protocol (VTP).
Layer 3 unicast support for the F2-Series 48-Port 1/10GbE module
IPv4 and IPv6, Web Cache Communication Protocol Version 2 (WCCPv2) Routing, Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) (v4 and v6), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) [v 4 and v 6], Routing Information Protocol (RIP), Policy Based Routing (PBR), Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) (v 4 and v 6), Gateway Load Balancing Protocol (GLBP), Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP), Object Tracking, Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD, 16-way Equal Cost Multipath (ECMP).
Multicast support for the F2-Series 48 Port 1/10GbE Module
Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) Snooping, IGMP, MLD, Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) (Any Source Multicast [ASM]., Source Specific Multicast [SSM]), PIMv6, Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP).
Security support for the F2-Series 48-Port 1/10GbE Module
1A separate VDC is needed when deploying the N7K-F248XP-25 modules in a chassis that also contains other families of modules (i.e. N7K-M1xxx and N7K-F1xxx).The VDC feature is enabled by the N7K-ADV1K9 license.
1A separate VDC is NOT required when the chassis contains only N7K-F248XP-25 modules.
2Supported on NX-OS 5.2 or later releases. The rest are supported in NX-OS 6.0 or later releases.
Support for Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders on F2 Module
The following Cisco Fabric Extenders are supported on the F2 module.
• Base license: A comprehensive feature set is provided with the Base license, which is bundled with the hardware at no additional cost.
• Enterprise license: The Enterprise license enables incremental functions that are applicable to many enterprise deployments.
• Advanced LAN Enterprise license: The Advanced LAN Enterprise license enables next-generation functions such as VDCs and Cisco TrustSec® security.
• Scalable Feature license: This license enables XL capabilities on the line cards. The Scalable Feature license is applied on a per-chassis basis.
• Transport Services license: This license enables OTV functions. The license to enable LISP is included in this license in Cisco NX-OS Release 6.0.
• Enhanced Layer 2 license: This license enables the Cisco FabricPath feature. The license to enable Pong is included in this license in Cisco NX-OS Release 6.0.
• MPLS license: This single license enables all MPLS features, including MPLS forwarding, QoS, L3VPN, 6PE/VPE, and OAM.
• FCoE license: This single license enables all FCoE features on the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches.
• Storage license: This license enables VSAN routing and access control.
Cisco offers a wide range of services to help accelerate your success in deploying and optimizing Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches in your data center. Cisco's innovative services are delivered through a unique combination of people, processes, tools, and partners and are focused on helping you increase your operating efficiency and improve your data center network. Cisco Advanced Services uses an architecture-led approach to help you align your data center infrastructure with your business goals and achieve long-term value. Cisco SMARTnet® Service helps you resolve mission-critical problems with direct access at any time to Cisco network experts and award-winning resources. With this service, you can take advantage of the Cisco Smart Call Home service capability, which offers proactive diagnostics and real-time alerts on your Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches. Spanning the entire network lifecycle, Cisco Services helps protect your investment, optimize network operations, support migration, and strengthen your IT expertise. For more information about Cisco Data Center Services, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/dcservices.
For More Information
For more information about Cisco NX-OS, visit the product homepage at http://www.cisco.com/go/nxos or contact your local account representative.
