The Cisco NX-OS releases for different platforms are identified interestingly. Let’s start with the mother of all NX-OS releases:
- x.y(z) = for Nexus 7000
Here x is the major release or software train, y is the minor release and z is the maintenance release. An example of the version number is 5.2(5).
See Cisco NX-OS Software Release Strategy for more information.
As the NX-OS releases are not directly compatible across different Nexus platforms Cisco added a platform designator for NX-OS releases for other platforms. These are formed like this (a and b are additional numbers or number+letter combinations to identify smaller changes in the version):
- x.y(z)Na(b) = for Nexus 5000
- x.y(z)Ea(b) = for Nexus 4000
- x.y(z)Xa(b) = does not exist, yet…
- x.y(z)Ua(b) = for Nexus 3000
- x.y(z)SVa(b) = for Nexus 1000V
Do you see the pattern with the red letters that show the platform for the particular release? I wonder what will be the platform carrying the X designator!
Nice detective work
Maybe we will see a top of rack “switch”
Obviously it cannot be a plain FEX as they don’t have user-downloadable images. But it is possible that the new platform is a hybrid platform that can be used both as a FEX and as a standalone switch! That’s my guess for now. I don’t bet for a Nexus 6000 yet because 7009 is still relatively new and 5596 is also not yet fully marketed and positioned yet.
Update for this: Now there is Nexus 6000 announced but it uses the same N series designation as Nexus 5000 series. So X is still available for something else!