Description

Product brief

The Cisco Nexus 9348GC-FXP Switch  (Figure 1 ) is a 1RU switch with 48 1GBASE-T downlink ports. It supports up to four SFP28 ports (configurable as 1/10/25 Gbps) and two QSFP28 ports (configurable as 40- or 100-Gbps). This switch is ideal for big data environments that need Gigabit Ethernet ToR switches with local switching capabilities.

Figure 1  Cisco Nexus 9348GC-FXP Switch

Features and benefits

Architectural Flexibility

• Industry-Leading Software Defined Networking Solution: Cisco ACI™ Support :Cisco ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure) is a powerful SDN solution that provides centralized automation, policy-driven management, and network programmability. It allows organizations to define and enforce policies consistently across their entire network infrastructure.
• Support for Standards-Based VXLAN EVPN Fabrics: VXLAN (Virtual Extensible LAN) with EVPN (Ethernet VPN) is a popular overlay network technology. It enables efficient communication between virtual machines (VMs) and physical servers across data centers. The hierarchical multi-site support ensures seamless connectivity across distributed environments.
• Three-Tier BGP Architectures for Web-Scale IPv6 Networks:BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is a robust routing protocol used in large-scale networks. A three-tier BGP architecture facilitates horizontal scaling, ensuring non-blocking communication in IPv6 networks. This design accommodates web-scale traffic demands.
• Segment Routing for Scalability and Virtualization: Segment routing is an innovative approach to forwarding packets within an MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) network. It eliminates the need for RSVP-TE (Resource Reservation Protocol – Traffic Engineering) and provides an alternative control-plane mechanism. This enhances network scalability and supports virtualization.
• Comprehensive Protocol Support for Layer 3 Unicast and Multicast Routing: The network supports various Layer 3 routing protocols for both unicast and multicast traffic. These include BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, RIPv2, PIM-SM, SSM, and MSDP. Each protocol serves specific purposes, such as dynamic routing, multicast distribution, and efficient path selection.

Extensive Programmability

• Day Zero Automation: The switches support Power On Auto Provisioning, significantly reducing provisioning time.
• DevOps Integration: They integrate seamlessly with popular configuration management tools like Ansible, Chef, Puppet, and SALT. Additionally, they offer extensive support for Native YANG and industry-standard OpenConfig models through RESTCONF/NETCONF.
• API Support: The switches provide APIs for all CLI functions, using JSON-based RPC over HTTP/HTTPs.

High Scalability, Flexibility, and Security

• Flexible Forwarding Tables: The FX models support up to 2 million shared entries in forwarding tables. You can customize Access Control List (ACL) templates using the flexible TCAM space.
• MAC Security (MACsec): On 9300-FX models with speeds greater than or equal to 10 Gbps, MACsec ensures traffic encryption at the physical layer, enhancing security for server, border leaf, and leaf-to-spine connectivity.

Intelligent Buffer Management

The Cisco platform incorporates innovative intelligent buffer management, which distinguishes between “mice” and “elephant” flows. It applies different queue management schemes to these flows based on their network forwarding requirements during link congestion.

Key functions of intelligent buffer management include:

• Approximate Fair Dropping (AFD) with Elephant Trap (ETRAP): AFD identifies long-lived elephant flows versus short-lived mice flows using ETRAP. Mice flows are exempted from the dropping algorithm, ensuring they receive their fair share of bandwidth without being impacted by bandwidth-hungry elephant flows. AFD also tracks elephant flows and allocates bandwidth fairly in the egress queue.
• ETRAP: This mechanism measures byte counts of incoming flows and compares them against a user-defined threshold. Once a flow crosses this threshold, it is classified as an elephant flow.
• Dynamic Packet Prioritization (DPP): DPP separates mice flows and elephant flows into distinct queues, allowing independent allocation of buffer space. Mice flows, sensitive to congestion and latency, can take priority in the queue, while elephant flows utilize the full link bandwidth.

RDME over Converged Ethernet – RoCE Support

The platform provides lossless transport for RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) with support for Data Center Bridging (DCB) protocols.

Key features include:

• Priority-based Flow Control (PFC): Prevents drops in the network and pauses frame propagation per priority class.
• Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS): Reserves bandwidth per priority class during network contention.
• Data Center Bridging Exchange Protocol (DCBX): Discovers and exchanges priority and bandwidth information with endpoints.
• Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN): Provides end-to-end notification by marking packets that experienced congestion without dropping traffic. The platform tracks ECN statistics for marked packets.

LAN and SAN Convergence

• Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) N-Port Virtualization (NPV) support allows network administrators to control domain IDs and management points on a Fibre Channel network as it scales. This feature enables LAN and SAN converged networks over a lossless, reliable Ethernet infrastructure.

Hardware and Software High Availability

• Virtual Port-Channel (vPC):
  • Function: Provides Layer 2 multipathing by eliminating the Spanning Tree Protocol.
  • Benefits:
    • Fully Utilized Bisectional Bandwidth: Optimizes network capacity.
    • Simplified Layer 2 Topologies: No need to modify existing management and deployment models.
• Equal-Cost MultiPath (ECMP) Routing:
  • Purpose: Enables Layer 3 fat-tree designs.
  • Advantages:
    • Prevents Network Bottlenecks: Distributes traffic efficiently.
    • Enhances Resiliency: Adds capacity with minimal disruption.
• Advanced Reboot Capabilities:
  • Hot and Cold Patching: Allows seamless updates without service interruption.
• Redundancy:
  • Hot-Swappable PSUs and Fans: N+1 redundancy ensures continuous operation

Purpose-Built Cisco NX-OS Software Operating System with Comprehensive, Proven Innovations

• Unified Image Management:
  • A single binary image supports all switches in the Cisco Nexus 9000 series, streamlining image management.
  • The modular operating system dedicates a process to each routing protocol, enhancing fault isolation and availability.
  • Process failures can be restarted without losing state.
  • Hot and cold patching, along with online diagnostics, are supported.
• Data Center Network Manager (DCNM):
  • DCNM is the network management platform for NX-OS-enabled deployments.
  • It accelerates provisioning, simplifies deployments, and reduces troubleshooting cycles.
  • Features include graphical operational visibility, automated change management, and real-time health summaries.
• Network Traffic Monitoring:
  • Cisco Nexus Data Broker facilitates simple, scalable, and cost-effective network Test Access Points (TAPs) and Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) aggregation for monitoring and analysis.

Cisco Network Assurance Engine (NAE)

• Continuous Verification:
  • NAE continuously verifies network infrastructure against policy intent.
  • It uses mathematical models to reason about policy, configuration, and dynamic state.
  • Precisely identifies network problems, impacted applications, and root causes.
  • Provides actionable suggestions for resolution.
• Proactive Operations:
  • Transforms Day 2 Operations from reactive to proactive mode.
  • Achieves this without relying on packet data.
  • Predicts the impact of changes, reducing IT incidents and repair time.
• Security and Compliance:
  • Assures network security and segmentation compliance.

Ordering information

Table 1.  Cisco Nexus  9348GC-FXP Series Switch specifications

Table 2.   Hardware performance and scalability specifications

Table 3.   Weight 

Table 4.  Ordering information