Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series 12-Port 40 Gigabit Ethernet Module
Product Overview
The Cisco Nexus® 7000 F3-Series 12-Port 40 Gigabit Ethernet Module (referred to as the Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module in this document) offers outstanding feature flexibility and wire-rate performance on each port. The module enables the deployment of high-density, low-latency, scalable data center architecture.
Powering Cisco’s Unified Fabric Architecture
The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches are the foundation of the Cisco Unified Fabric solution. Designed to meet the requirements of mission-critical data centers, these switches deliver exceptional availability, outstanding scalability, and the proven and comprehensive Cisco NX-OS Software data center switching feature set.
The first in the next generation of data center switching platforms, the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series provides integrated resilience combined with features optimized specifically for availability, reliability, scalability, and ease of management. The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches’ fabric architecture scales beyond 17 terabits per second (Tbps) and is designed to support high-density 10 Gigabit, 40 Gigabit Ethernet, and 100 Gigabit Ethernet deployments. Up to 768 native 10-Gbps ports, 192 40-Gbps ports, and 96 100-Gbps ports can be supported in a single Cisco Nexus 7000 Series chassis.
The Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module (Figure 1) is a low-latency, high-performance, high-density 40 Gigabit Ethernet module. It is operationally consistent with the Cisco Nexus 7700 F3-Series modules and shares a common system architecture and the same application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology. Up to 192 wire-rate 40 Gigabit Ethernet ports are supported in a single Cisco Nexus 7000 18-Slot Switch chassis (Table 1).
The Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module is based on the Cisco Nexus F3-Series switch-on-chip (SoC) ASIC. This type of design increases performance while lowering the power and cooling requirements of the module. The Cisco Nexus F3-Series SoC is an innovative Cisco-designed ASIC powered by a flexible packet engine, which makes it excellent for building the network infrastructure for public and private cloud environments. The Cisco Nexus F3-Series engine can support all the foundational networking protocols needed to build Layer 2 and Layer 3 networks, and it also supports highly virtualized environments with virtual overlay networking, hardware support for Cisco Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN), and Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP) technology. Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series hardware enables customers to transparently interconnect their data centers with protocols such as Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS).
The module delivers 720 million packets per second (mpps) of distributed Layer 2 and Layer 3 forwarding and up to 480 Gbps of data throughput. A Cisco Nexus 7000 18-Slot Switch fully populated with the Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module can deliver up to 11.5 bpps and 15.4 Tbps of switching performance.
Item | Specifications |
System | |
Product compatibility | Supported on Cisco Nexus 7000 4-, 9- 10-, and 18-Slot Switch chassis. |
Software compatibility | Contact your local account representative for software release availability |
Front-panel LEDs | ● Status: Green (operational), red (faulty), or orange (module booting) ● Link: Green (port enabled and connected), orange (port disabled), off (port enabled and not connected), or blinking green and orange in conjunction with ID LED blue (port flagged for identification; beacon) ● ID: Blue (operator has flagged this card for identification; beacon) or off (module not flagged) |
Programming interfaces | ● XML ● Scriptable command-line interface (CLI) ● Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) web services ● Python ● Tool Command Language (TCL) interpreter ● Cisco Embedded Event Manager (EEM) ● Cisco One Platform Kit (OnePK) ● OpenFlow |
Physical Interfaces | |
Connectivity | 12 ports of 40 Gigabit Ethernet (QSFP+) |
Maximum port density | ● 192 ports of 40 Gigabit Ethernet in Cisco Nexus 7000 18-Slot chassis ● 96 ports of 40 Gigabit Ethernet in Cisco Nexus 7000 10-Slot chassis ● 84 ports of 40 Gigabit Ethernet in Cisco Nexus 7000 9-Slot chassis ● 24 ports of 40 Gigabit Ethernet in Cisco Nexus 7000 4-Slot chassis |
Queues per port | 4 ingress, 4 egress |
Virtual output queue (VOQ) buffer | 72 MB per module |
Jumbo frame support for bridged and routed packets | Up to 9216 bytes |
SoC | |
Performance | 720 mpps of Layer 2 and Layer 3 forwarding capacity for both IPv4 and IPv6 packets |
MAC address entries | 64K |
VLAN | 4096 simultaneous VLANs per VDC |
IPv4 entries | 64K |
IPv6 entries | 32K |
Adjacency entries | 64K |
ACLs | 16K |
CoPP | Supported |
Environmental | |
Physical dimensions | ● Occupies one I/O module slot in a Cisco Nexus 7000 switch chassis ● Dimensions (H x W x D): 1.733 x 15.3 x 21.9 in. (4.4 x 38.9 x 55.6 cm) ● Weight: 15lb (6.8kg) |
Features and Benefits
Note: N7K-SUP2 or N7K-SUP2E is required to support F3-series modules in the chassis.
The Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module integrates a broad set of data center switching technologies, including industry standards and Cisco’s own innovations. It combines the benefits of classical fabric interface line cards with the advanced routing features of edge interface modules. With this integration, the module provides exceptional investment protection for organizations consolidating data center environments while migrating to dense multiservice 40 Gigabit Ethernet networks.
● The Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module is powered by the proven and comprehensive Cisco NX-OS feature set. This extremely comprehensive set of Layer 2 and Layer 3 functions makes this module excellent for data center networks, in which density, performance, and continuous system operation are critical.
● The Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module is a critical enabler of Cisco FabricPath. With Cisco FabricPath, organizations can build resilient, flexible, and if needed, massively scalable Layer 2 networks. Cisco FabricPath protects enterprises’ investments by allowing existing spanning-tree-based deployments to be connected to a Cisco FabricPath network.
● The Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module can be used in conjunction with the Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders (FEX). The Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders are designed to simplify data center architecture and operations by dramatically reducing the number of points of management.
● The Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module supports port breakout. Each of the 12 physical ports on the module can be configured as 4 logical and independent 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. This breakout mode can be configured at any time on any port independently from configuration of other ports, and without the need to reload the module. Copper or fiber breakout assemblies are required to enable the physical separation of 10-Gigabit channels.
● The Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module delivers integrated Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), greatly simplifying the network infrastructure and reducing costs by enabling the deployment of unified data center fabrics to consolidate data center traffic onto a single, general-purpose, high-performance, highly available network. With the Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module, FCoE can be deployed in director-class modular platforms for the access layer and core of converged networks.
● The Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module provides support for wire-rate VXLAN, offering the architectural flexibility needed to expand cloud deployments with repeatable pods in different Layer 2 domains. VXLAN can also enable migration of virtual machines between servers across Layer 3 networks.
● The support of advanced data center interconnect (DCI) protocols such as Cisco OTV and VPLS makes the module excellent for helping customers simplify the extension of applications across geographically dispersed data center sites.
● The Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module supports high-performance MPLS for 40 Gigabit Ethernet data center deployments.
● Support for Cisco LISP allows enterprises and service providers to simplify multi-homed routing, and it facilitates scalable any-to-any WAN connectivity while supporting data center virtual machine mobility.
● The virtual device context (VDC) feature helps enable the virtualization of a single physical device in one or more logical devices. Each provisioned logical device is configured and managed as if it were a separate physical device.
● The Cisco Nexus 7000 F3-Series module offers exceptional security, with integrated hardware support for:
◦ Configurable Control-Plane Policing (CoPP), which protects the supervisor CPU from excessive traffic
◦ Access control list (ACL) counters and logging capability to provide deeper packet visibility
◦ Layer 2 to Layer 4 ACL for both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic
◦ Cisco TrustSec® technology and ACL processing for security group tags (SGTs)
Environmental conditions | ● Operating temperature: 32 to 104°F (0 to 40°C) ● Operational relative humidity: 5 to 90%, noncondensing ● Storage temperature: -40 to 158°F (-40 to 70°C) ● Storage relative humidity: 5 to 95%, noncondensing |
Regulatory compliance | ● EMC compliance ● FCC Part 15 (CFR 47) (USA) Class A ● ICES-003 (Canada) Class A ● EN55022 (Europe) Class A ● CISPR22 (International) Class A ● AS/NZS CISPR22 (Australia and New Zealand) Class A ● VCCI (Japan) Class A ● KN22 (Korea) Class A ● CNS13438 (Taiwan) Class A ● CISPR24 ● EN55024 ● EN50082-1 ● EN61000-3-2 ● EN61000-3-3 ● EN61000-6-1 ● EN300 386 |
Environmental standards | ● NEBS criteria levels * ◦ SR-3580 NEBS Level 3 (GR-63-CORE and GR-1089-CORE) ● Verizon NEBS compliance * ◦ Telecommunications Carrier Group (TCG) Checklist ● Century Link NEBS requirements * ◦ Telecommunications Carrier Group (TCG) Checklist ● ATT NEBS requirements * ◦ ATT TP76200 level 3 ● ETSI * ◦ ETSI 300 019-2-1, Class 1.2 Storage ◦ ETSI 300 019-2-2, Class 2.3 Transportation ◦ ETSI 300 019-2-3, Class 3.2 Stationary Use *Validation in progress |
Safety | ● UL/CSA/IEC/EN 60950-1 ● AS/NZS 60950 |
Warranty | ● Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches come with the standard Cisco 1-year limited hardware warranty |
