N2K-C2348TQ-E

Product Overview

Simplify your data center access architecture and operations with the Cisco Nexus^® 2300 platform fabric extenders, the successors to the industry’s widely adopted Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders. The Cisco Nexus 2300 platform with its Cisco^® fabric extender architecture provides a highly scalable unified server-access platform across a range of connectivity options such as 100 Megabit Ethernet; 1, 10, and 40 Gigabit Ethernet; unified fabric; copper and fiber connectivity; and rack and blade server environments.

The platform offers excellent support for migration from traditional 1 Gigabit Ethernet to 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet and virtual machine - aware unified fabric technologies.

The Cisco Nexus 2300 platform maintains all the existing Cisco Nexus 2000 Series features, including a single point of management, high availability with virtual PortChannels (vPC), vPC+, Enhanced vPC, and LAN and SAN convergence using Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). With the addition of true 40 Gigabit Ethernet support, deep buffers to handle bursts of traffic common in today’s data center, and unified port capability (on 2348UPQ with 5600 only starting 7.3 release), the Cisco Nexus 2300 platform is suitable for highly virtualized, automated, and cloud environments.

The Cisco Nexus 2300 fabric extenders provide a 1-rack-unit (1RU) energy-efficient platform with a choice of front-to-back (port-side exhaust) and back-to-front (port-side intake) airflow options that offer 100 Megabit Ethernet; 1, 10, and 40 Gigabit Ethernet; Fibre Channel (on 2348UPQ with 5600 only starting 7.3 release); and FCoE for a broad range of traditional data center and large-scale virtualized cloud deployments.

The Cisco Nexus 2300 platform provides:

·          Architecture flexibility with simplified operations: The fabric extender support unified ports (on 2348UPQ with 5600 only starting 7.3), allowing flexible deployment and LAN and SAN convergence in a heterogeneous architecture. A common, scalable, and adaptive architecture across data center racks and points of delivery (PoDs)^ῖsupports a variety of server options, connectivity options, physical topologies, and evolving needs. A single point of management and policy enforcement using upstream Cisco Nexus switches eases the commissioning and decommissioning of server racks through zero-touch installation and automatic configuration of fabric extenders.

·          Highly scalable server access: Today’s data centers require massive scalability to manage the increasing number of servers and higher demand for bandwidth from each server. The Cisco Nexus 2300 platform meets this need with higher-density ports facing servers and the parent switch without any changes to the existing cable plant. The 100 Megabit, 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet server access, and the 40 Gigabit network access are scalable, with no reliance on Spanning Tree Protocol. The Cisco Nexus 2300 platform can also provide up to 2:1 oversubscription.

·          Enhanced buffer for applications: In today’s data center, application teams require the network to be flexible and capable of handling the rapid growth of applications. The Cisco Nexus 2300 platform provides deep shared buffers (32 MB) to absorb bursts of traffic from storage devices and a wide variety of applications, such as multicast feeds, voice traffic, video traffic, and healthcare applications. These deep buffers also provide flexibility to expand your network as your needs change. The shared buffers are also very useful in situations in which one or more servers are consuming most of the bandwidth in highly oversubscribed environments.

·          Increased business benefits: The Cisco Nexus 2300 platform helps data centers keep their space, power, and cooling requirements under control while reducing their carbon footprints. Through consolidation, the fabric extenders reduce cabling, rack space, and power and cooling demands. By inheriting features from the parent switch, they offer investment protection and the capability to add functions without the need for a major upgrade of server-attached infrastructure. This capability helps reduce operating expenses (OpEx) and capital expenditures (CapEx). The 40-Gbps Quad Enhanced Small Form-Factor Pluggable (QSFP+) fabric interfaces offer cost-effective, simplified connectivity to Cisco Nexus parent switches and support for QSFP 40-Gbps bidirectional (BiDi) short-reach transceivers.

The Cisco Nexus 2300 platform has a compact 1RU design that aligns with server designs. It offers front-to-back cooling that is compatible with data center hot-aisle and cold-aisle designs. All switch ports are at the rear of the unit close to server ports, and all user-serviceable components are accessible from the front panel. The platform also offers back-to-front cooling, with switch ports in the front of the chassis aligned with the cold aisle for optimized cabling in network racks. The Cisco Nexus 2300 platform is built for nonstop operation with redundant hot-swappable power supplies and a hot-swappable fan tray with redundant fans. The 1RU form factor takes up little space, making it easy to incorporate into rack designs. The fabric extenders are available in several models with a range of speed, connectivity, and port-density options.

Cisco Nexus 2348TQ-E Fabric Extender

The Nexus 2348TQ-E is a cost optimized platform that is well suited for migration to 10GBASE-T. It supports high-density 100 Megabit Ethernet and 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet environments and has 48 x 100MBASE-T and 1/10GBASE-T host interface (HIF) ports as well up to six 40-Gbps uplink ports to the parent switch. The 40-Gbps uplinks support BiDi optics for simple connectivity using your existing cable plan, while lowering power and solution costs. The Cisco Nexus 2348TQ-E supports FCoE.

Support for both forward (port-side exhaust) and reverse (port-side intake) airflow schemes is available. Forward airflow is useful when the port side of the switch sits on a hot aisle and the power-supply side sits on a cold aisle. Reverse airflow is useful when the power-supply side of the switch sits on a hot aisle and the port side sits on a cold aisle. The Cisco Nexus 2348TQ has two 1+1 redundant hot-swappable power supplies and three hot-swappable independent fans with support for 2+1 redundancy.