Some of you may be interested in QSFP+ connections with Cisco Nexus 5500 and Nexus 6000 series switches. The scope of this post is not to present all the different flavors of QSFP+ pluggables or all QSFP+ capable devices but I’ll present some special features that need to be understood and considered when deploying QSFP+ […]
Tag: nexus 5500
NX-OS Releases and Platforms
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 […]
Configuring vPC to Suspend Orphan Ports
As you should know (simplified rule): Whenever the vPC peer link goes down the vPC secondary switch brings down all its connected vPC ports, assuming those vPCs are up in the vPC primary switch. This means that if you have non-vPC-connected hosts on your vPC secondary switch then those ports are left up and traffic […]
Private VLANs on Nexus 5000 Series
So it was a usual day in the wonderful world of networking and projects. Then I was suddenly lost in the Private VLANs. You know, the feature that has existed a long time in Cisco switches but still there are some known and unknown limitations in using it. Let’s talk about PVLANs. First the basics […]
Importing Configuration in the Switch Profile
In an earlier post (Dual-Homed FEXes and Switch Profiles) I wrote about the switch profiles and how to use them to configure dual-homed FEXes. I mentioned that it is possible to import existing configurations into the switch profiles. Now I was really attempting it in practice. When importing configurations I constantly struck myself to the […]
Nexus 5000 and Nexus 2000 Series Twinax Cables Certification Matrix
If you are going to use Twinax cables with your Nexus 5000 series switches or Nexus 2000 series FEXes you can check the certification matrix here: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps10110/data_sheet_c78-568589_ps9670_Products_Data_Sheet.html As a bonus sector, data sheet for the 10G SFP+ modules is found in http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/modules/ps5455/data_sheet_c78-455693.html.
Choosing Your Core Switches
When designing data center or campus LAN with Cisco products (see I made the point clear here immediately) a no-brainer solution is using Nexus 7000 switches in the core. There aren’t really many cases you can go wrong operationally with it in general-purpose data center or even campus environments. But, if you think they cost […]
Nexus 5000 Tips for Catalyst Admins
I kind of understand the pain that each network admin has when changing the platform, especially if you haven’t had enough time to get experience on the new system prior to production. This article is meant to help the Cisco Catalyst admins to get some hold of Nexus 5000 series switch. Don’t expect this to […]
Dual-homed FEXes and Switch Profiles
Using dual-homed FEXes with Cisco Nexus 5000 switches presents some new issues for the network admins. One important feature is that the FEX port configuration needs to exist on the both N5ks. Let’s see the topology example where the FEX is connected to the switches with vPC (= dual-homed FEX): The server is connected to […]
Nexus 5000 Series NX-OS 5.1(3)N1(1) is out
Cisco has this week released NX-OS 5.1(3)N1(1) for Nexus 5000 Series switches. See the release notes for more information, and there really is lots of information: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5000/sw/release/notes/Rel_5_1_3_N1_1/Nexus5000_Release_Notes_5_1_3_N1.html Note: The Dual-layer vPC I talked about is called Enhanced vPC (EvPC) in the release notes.