Cisco C-series Nexus 5010 User manual

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Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch CLI Software Configuration Guide
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Product Overview
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series is a family of top-of-rack switches for the data center. The Cisco Nexus
5000 Series offers high-speed Ethernet switching and supports Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to
provide data center I/O consolidation (IOC).
The Nexus 5010 switch provides 20 fixed Ethernet ports in a 1 RU switch and the Nexus 5020 switch
provides 40 fixed Ethernet ports in a 2 RU switch. Optional expansion modules provide native Fibre
Channel ports and additional Ethernet ports.
This chapter describes the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches and includes the following sections:
•New Technologies in the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series, page 1-1
•Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Hardware, page 1-3
•Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Software, page 1-4
•Typical Deployment Topologies, page 1-7
•Supported Standards, page 1-10
New Technologies in the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches introduce several new technologies, which are described in the
following sections:
•Fibre Channel over Ethernet, page 1-1
•I/O Consolidation, page 1-2
•Virtual Interfaces, page 1-3
Fibre Channel over Ethernet
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) provides a method of encapsulating Fibre Channel traffic over a
physical Ethernet link. FCoE frames use a unique Ethertype so that FCoE traffic and standard Ethernet
traffic can be carried on the same link.
Fibre Channel traffic requires a lossless transport layer. Native Fibre Channel implements lossless
service using a buffer-to-buffer credit system. For FCoE traffic, the Ethernet link must provide lossless
service.
Ethernet links on Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches provide two mechanisms to ensure lossless transport
for FCoE traffic: link-level flow control and priority flow control.

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Chapter 1 Product Overview
New Technologies in the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series
IEEE 802.3x link-level flow control allows a congested receiver to signal the far end to pause the data
transmission for a short period of time. The pause functionality is applied to all the traffic on the link.
The priority flow control (PFC) feature applies pause functionality to specific classes of traffic on the
Ethernet link. For example, PFC can provide lossless service for the FCoE traffic, and best-effort service
for the standard Ethernet traffic. PFC can provide different levels of service to specific classes of
Ethernet traffic (using IEEE 802.1p traffic classes).
I/O Consolidation
I/O consolidation (IOC) allows a single network technology to carry IP, SAN and IPC traffic.
FCoE enables an evolutionary approach to IOC. The upper Fibre Channel layers are unchanged, so the
Fibre Channel operational model is maintained. FCoE network management and configuration is similar
to a native Fibre Channel network.
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches use FCoE to carry Fibre Channel and Ethernet traffic on the same
physical Ethernet connection between the switch and the server. At the server, the connection terminates
to a converged network adapter (CNA) . The adapter presents two interfaces to the server’s operating
system (OS): one Ethernet NIC interface and one Fibre Channel HBA interface. The server OS is not
aware of the FCoE encapsulation (See Figure 1-1)
At the switch, the incoming Ethernet port separates the Ethernet and Fibre Channel traffic (using
Ethertype to differentiate the frames). Ethernet frames and Fibre Channel frames are switched to their
respective network-side interfaces.
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches provide quality of service (QoS) capabilities to ensure lossless service
across the switch for Fibre Channel traffic. Best-effort service can be applied to all of the Ethernet traffic
or specific classes of Ethernet traffic can be configured with different QoS levels.
Figure 1-1 I/O Consolidation
FCoE
Adapter
10GE
NIC
FC
HBA
IP FC SAN
10GE
10GE
FC
IOC Switch
Server
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Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Hardware
Virtual Interfaces
When FCoE is enabled, a physical Ethernet cable carries traffic for a logical Fibre Channel connection.
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch uses virtual interfaces to represent the logical Fibre Channel
connections. For configuration purposes, virtual Fibre Channel interfaces are implemented as Layer 2
subinterfaces of the physical Ethernet interface.
Ethernet features (such as link debounce timer and VLAN membership) are configured on the physical
Ethernet interface. Logical Fibre Channel features (such as VSAN membership) are configured on the
virtual Fibre Channel interfaces.
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Hardware
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series includes the Nexus 5010 and Nexus 5020 switches. The Cisco Nexus 5000
Series switch hardware is described in the following topics:
•Chassis, page 1-3
•Expansion Modules, page 1-3
•Ethernet Interfaces, page 1-3
•Fibre Channel Interfaces, page 1-4
•Management Interfaces, page 1-4
Chassis
The Nexus 5010 switch is a 1 RU chassis and the Nexus 5020 switch is a 2 RU chassis designed for rack
mounting. The chassis supports redundant fans and power supplies.
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switching fabric is low latency, nonblocking and supports Ethernet frame
sizes from 64 to 9216 bytes.
Expansion Modules
The Nexus 5010 switch has one slot and the Nexus 5020 switch has two slots for optional expansion
modules. The following expansion modules are available:
•N5K-M1404 provides four 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports, and four 1/2/4 Gb Fibre Channel ports.
•N5K-M1600 provides six 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports.
•N5K-M1008 provides eight 1/2/4 Gb Fibre Channel ports.
The expansion modules are field-replaceable units (FRUs) that support online insertion and removal
(OIR).
Ethernet Interfaces
The Nexus 5010 switch has 20 fixed 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports equipped with SFP+ interface adapters.
The first 8 ports are switchable 1-Gigabit/10-Gigabit ports. Up to 6 additional 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports
are available on an expansion module.

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Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Software
The Nexus 5020 switch has 40 fixed 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports equipped with SFP+ interface adapters.
The first 16 ports are switchable 1-Gigabit/10-Gigabit ports. Up to 12 additional 10-Gigabit Ethernet
ports are available on the expansion modules.
All of the 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports support FCoE. Each port can be used as a downlink (connected to a
server) or as an uplink (to the data center LAN).
Fibre Channel Interfaces
Fibre Channel ports are optional on the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch. When using expansion modules
up to eight Fibre Channel ports are available on the Nexus 5010 switch and up to sixteen Fibre Channel
ports are available on the Nexus 5020 switch.
Each Fibre Channel port can be used as a downlink (connected to a server) or as an uplink (to the data
center SAN fabric).
Management Interfaces
A Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch has two dedicated management interfaces (one serial console port and
one 10/100/1000 Ethernet interface).
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Software
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch is a Layer 2 device, which runs the Cisco Nexus operating system
(NX-OS). The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch software is described in the following topics:
•Ethernet Switching, page 1-4
•FCoE and Fibre Channel Switching, page 1-5
•Licensing, page 1-5
•QoS, page 1-5
•Serviceability, page 1-5
•Switch Management, page 1-6
•Network Security Features, page 1-7
•Virtual Device Contexts, page 1-7
Ethernet Switching
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches are designed to support high-density, high-performance Ethernet
systems and provide the following Ethernet switching features:
•IEEE 802.1D-2004 Rapid and Multiple Spanning Tree Protocols (802.1w and 802.1s)
•IEEE 802.1Q VLANs and trunks
•IEEE 802.3ad link aggregation
•Private VLANs
•Traffic suppression (unicast, multicast, and broadcast)

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Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Software
FCoE and Fibre Channel Switching
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches support data center I/O consolidation (IOC) by providing FCoE
interfaces (to the servers) and native Fibre Channel interfaces (to the SAN).
FCoE and Fibre Channel switching includes the following features:
•Cisco fabric services
•N-port virtualization
•VSANs and VSAN trunking
•Zoning
•Distributed device alias service
•SAN port channels
Licensing
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches are shipped with the licenses installed. The switch provides commands to
manage the licenses and install additional licenses.
QoS
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch provides quality of service (QoS) capabilities such as traffic
prioritization and bandwidth allocation on egress interfaces.
The default QoS configuration on the switch provides lossless service for Fibre Channel and FCoE
traffic. QoS can be configured to provide additional classes of service for Ethernet traffic.
Serviceability
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch serviceability functions provide data for network planning and help
to improve problem resolution time.
This section includes the following topics:
•Switched Port Analyzer, page 1-5
•Ethanalyzer, page 1-6
•Call Home, page 1-6
•Online Diagnostics, page 1-6
Switched Port Analyzer
The switched port analyzer (SPAN) feature allows an administrator to analyze all traffic between ports
by nonintrusively directing the SPAN session traffic to a SPAN destination port that has an external
analyzer attached to it.

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Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Software
Ethanalyzer
Ethanalyzer is a Cisco NX-OS protocol analyzer tool based on the Wireshark (formerly Ethereal) open
source code. Ethanalyzer is a command-line version of Wireshark for capturing and decoding packets. You
can use Ethanalyzer to troubleshoot your network and analyze the control-plane traffic. For more informa-
tion about Ethanalyzer, see Cisco NX-OS Troubleshooting Guide, Release 4.0.
Call Home
The Call Home feature continuously monitors hardware and software components to provide
e-mail-based notification of critical system events. A versatile range of message formats is available for
optimal compatibility with pager services, standard e-mail, and XML-based automated parsing
applications. The feature offers alert grouping capabilities and customizable destination profiles. This
feature can be used, for example, to directly page a network support engineer, send an e-mail message
to a network operations center (NOC), and employ Cisco AutoNotify services to directly generate a case
with the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC). This feature is a step toward autonomous system
operation, which enables networking devices to inform IT when a problem occurs and helps to ensure
that the problem is resolved quickly.
Online Diagnostics
Cisco generic online diagnostics (GOLD) is a suite of diagnostic facilities to verify that hardware and
internal data paths are operating as designed. Boot-time diagnostics, continuous monitoring, and
on-demand and scheduled tests are part of the Cisco GOLD feature set. GOLD allows rapid fault
isolation and continuous system monitoring.
Switch Management
This section includes the following topics:
•Simple Network Management Protocol, page 1-6
•Role-Based Access Control, page 1-6
•Configuration Methods, page 1-6
Simple Network Management Protocol
Cisco NX-OS is compliant with Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) version 1, version 2,
and version 3. A full set of Management Information Bases (MIBs) is supported.
Role-Based Access Control
With role-based access control (RBAC), you can limit access to switch operations by assigning roles to
users. Administrators can customize access and restrict it to the users who require it.
Configuration Methods
You can configure Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches using direct network configuration methods or web
services hosted on a Fabric Manager server.

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Typical Deployment Topologies
This section includes the following topics:
•Configuring with CLI, XML Management Interface, or SNMP, page 1-7
•Configuring with Cisco MDS Fabric Manager, page 1-7
Configuring with CLI, XML Management Interface, or SNMP
You can configure Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches using the command line interface (CLI), the XML
management interface over SSH, or SNMP as follows:
•CLI —You can configure switches using the CLI from an SSH session, a Telnet session. or the
console port. SSH provides a secure connection to the device.
•XML Management Interface over SSH—You can configure switches using the XML management
interface, which is a programming interface based on the NETCONF protocol that complements the
CLI functionality. For more information, see the Cisco NX-OS XML Management Interface User
Guide, Release 4.0.
•SNMP—SNMP allows you to configure switches using Management Information Bases (MIBs).
Configuring with Cisco MDS Fabric Manager
You can configure Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches using the Fabric Manager client, which runs on a
local PC and uses the Fabric Manager server.
Network Security Features
Cisco NX-OS Release 4.0 includes the following security features:
•Authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) and TACACS+
•RADIUS
•Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol Version 2
•Simple Network Management Protocol Version 3 (SNMPv3)
•MAC ACLs and IP ACLs, including port-based ACLs (PACLs) and VLAN-based ACLs (VACLs).
Virtual Device Contexts
Cisco NX-OS can segment operating system and hardware resources into virtual device contexts (VDC)
that emulate virtual devices. The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch does not support multiple VDCs. All
switch resources are managed in the default VDC.
Typical Deployment Topologies
In this release, the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch is typically deployed in the following topologies:
•Ethernet TOR Switch Topology, page 1-8
•IOC Topology, page 1-9

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Typical Deployment Topologies
Ethernet TOR Switch Topology
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch can be deployed as a 10-Gigabit Ethernet top-of-rack (TOR) switch,
with uplinks to the data center LAN distribution layer switches. An example configuration in shown in
Figure 1-2.
In this example, the blade server rack incorporates blade switches that support 10-Gigabit Ethernet
uplinks to the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch. The blade switches do not support FCoE, so there is no
FCoE traffic and no Fibre Channel ports on the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch.
In the example configuration, the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch has Ethernet uplinks to two Catalyst
switches. If STP is enabled in the data center LAN, the links to one of the switches will be STP active
and the links to the other switch will be STP blocked.
Figure 1-2 Ethernet TOR Switch Topology
All of the server-side ports on the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch are running standard Ethernet. FCoE
is not required, so the server ports are connected using 10-Gigabit Ethernet NICs.
The servers are connected to the data center SAN through MDS 9134 SAN switches. The server Fibre
Channel ports require standard Fibre Channel HBAs.
SAN-A LAN Core SAN-B
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Typical Deployment Topologies
IOC Topology
Figure 1-3 shows a typical I/O consolidation (IOC) scenario for the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch.
Figure 1-3 I/O Consolidation Topology
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch connects to the server ports using FCoE. Ports on the server require
converged network adapters. For redundancy, each server connects to both switches. Dual-port CNA
adapters can be used for this purpose. The CNA is configured in active-passive mode, and the server
needs to support server-based failover.
On the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch, the Ethernet network-facing ports are connected to two Catalyst
6500 switches. Depending on required uplink traffic volume, there may be multiple ports connected to
each Catalyst 6500 switch, configured as port channels. If STP is enabled in the data center LAN, the
links to one of the switches will be STP active and the links to the other switch will be STP blocked.
The SAN network-facing ports on the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch are connected to Cisco MDS 9000
Family switches. Depending on required traffic volume, there may be multiple Fibre Channel ports
connected to each MDS 9000 Family switch, configured as SAN port channels.
SAN-A LAN Core SAN-B
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Supported Standards
Supported Standards
Table 1-1 lists the standards supported by the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches.
Table 1-1 IEEE Compliance
Standard Description
802.1D MAC Bridges
802.1s Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol
802.1w Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol
802.3ad Link aggregation with LACP
802.3ae 10 Gigabit Ethernet
802.1Q VLAN Tagging
802.1p Class of Service Tagging for Ethernet frames