Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects Data Sheet

 

Cisco Unified Computing System overview

The Cisco Unified Computing System^™ (Cisco UCS^®) is a next-generation data center platform that unites computing, networking, storage access, and virtualization resources into a cohesive system designed to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increase business agility. The system integrates a low-latency, lossless 10/25/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet unified network fabric with enterprise-class, x86-architecture servers. The system is an integrated, scalable, multichassis platform in which all resources participate in a unified management domain (Figure 1).

The Cisco Unified Computing System’s highly available, cohesive architecture

Product overview

The Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects are a core part of the Cisco Unified Computing System, providing both network connectivity and management capabilities for the system (Figure 2). The Cisco UCS 6400 Series offer line-rate, low-latency, lossless 10/25/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and Fibre Channel functions.

The Cisco UCS 6400 Series provide the management and communication backbone for the Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers, UCS 5108 B-Series Server Chassis, UCS Managed C-Series Rack Servers, and UCS S-Series Storage Servers. All servers attached to a Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnect become part of a single, highly available management domain. In addition, by supporting a unified fabric, Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnect provides both the LAN and SAN connectivity for all servers within its domain.

From a networking perspective, the Cisco UCS 6400 Series use a cut-through architecture, supporting deterministic, low-latency, line-rate 10/25/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet ports, switching capacity of 3.82 Tbps for the 6454, 7.42 Tbps for the 64108, and 200 Gbps bandwidth between the Fabric Interconnect 6400 series and the IOM 2408 per 5108 blade chassis, independent of packet size and enabled services. The product family supports Cisco low-latency, lossless 10/25/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet unified network fabric capabilities, which increase the reliability, efficiency, and scalability of Ethernet networks. The fabric interconnect supports multiple traffic classes over a lossless Ethernet fabric from the server through the fabric interconnect. Significant TCO savings come from an FCoE-optimized server design in which Network Interface Cards (NICs), Host Bus Adapters (HBAs), cables, and switches can be consolidated.

Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect

Cisco UCS 64108

Unified fabric with FCoE: I/O consolidation

The Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects are built to consolidate LAN and SAN traffic onto a single unified fabric, saving the Capital Expenditures (CapEx) and Operating Expenses (OpEx) associated with multiple parallel networks, different types of adapter cards, switching infrastructure, and cabling within racks. The unified ports allow ports in the fabric interconnect to support direct connections from Cisco UCS to existing native Fibre Channel SANs. The capability to connect FCoE to a native Fibre Channel protects existing storage-system investments while dramatically simplifying in-rack cabling.

Cisco UCS Manager

The Cisco UCS 6400 Series host and run Cisco UCS Manager in a highly available configuration, enabling the fabric interconnects to fully manage all Cisco UCS elements. Connectivity to the Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis is maintained through the Cisco UCS 2200 and 2408 Series Fabric Extenders in each blade chassis. The Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects support out-of-band management, through a dedicated 10/100/1000-Mbps Ethernet management port, as well as in-band management. Cisco UCS Manager typically is deployed in a clustered active/passive configuration on redundant fabric interconnects connected through dual 10/100/1000 Ethernet clustering ports.

Cisco UCS 6454 54-Port Fabric Interconnect

The Cisco UCS 6454 54-Port Fabric Interconnect (Figure 3) is a One-Rack-Unit (1RU) 10/25/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet, FCoE, and Fibre Channel switch offering up to 3.82 Tbps throughput and up to 54 ports. The switch has 28 10/25-Gbps Ethernet ports, 4 1/10/25- Gbps Ethernet ports, 6 40/100-Gbps Ethernet uplink ports, and 16 unified ports that can support 10/25-Gbps Ethernet ports or 8/16/32-Gbps Fibre Channel ports. All Ethernet ports are capable of supporting FCoE.

Front view

Rear view

Cisco UCS 6454 (1RU) 54-Port Fabric Interconnect

Cisco UCS 64108 108-Port Fabric Interconnect

The Cisco UCS 64108 Fabric Interconnect (FI) is a 2-RU top-of-rack switch that mounts in a standard 19-inch rack such as the Cisco R Series rack. The 64108 is a 10/25/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet, FCoE and Fiber Channel switch offering up to 7.42 Tbps throughput and up to 108 ports. The switch has 16 unified ports (port numbers 1-16) that can support 10/25-Gbps SFP28 Ethernet ports or 8/16/32-Gbps Fibre Channel ports, 72 10/25-Gbps Ethernet SFP28 ports (port numbers 17-88), 8 1/10/25-Gbps Ethernet SFP28 ports (port numbers 89-96), and 12 40/100-Gbps Ethernet QSFP28 uplink ports (port numbers 97-108). All Ethernet ports are capable of supporting FCoE.

The Cisco UCS 64108 Fabric Interconnect also has one network management port, one console port for setting the initial configuration, and one USB port for saving or loading configurations. The FI also includes L1/L2 ports for connecting two fabric interconnects for high availability.

Front view

Rear view

Cisco UCS 64108 (2 RU) 108-Port Fabric Interconnect

Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of the Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects.

Table 1.        Characteristics of Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects

Note:      Breakout cables for uplink are supported on ports 49-54 (FI 6454) and 97-108 (FI 64108) when connecting to Nexus 9K switches.

Note:      From 4.1(3) release, FI 6454 and 64108 supports server-ports on the 40/100G ports after break-out (ports 49-54 and 97-108 respectively). Only direct-connect rack-servers at 10/25G speeds with VIC 1455/1457 are supported on the 40/100G ports. Note that server port at 40/100G speeds are not supported. FI 6454 can support maximum of 64 server-ports and FI 64108 can support 128 server ports after breakout of 40/100G ports.

Features and benefits

Table 2 summarizes the features and benefits of Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects.

Table 2.        Features and benefits

Product specifications

Transceivers

The Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects support a wide variety of 10/25/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity options using Cisco 10/25/40/100 Gbps modules. Unified Ports (UP) on the Cisco UCS 6400 Series support 10/25 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity or 8/16/32 Gigabit Fibre Channel modules. Uplink ports support 40/100 Gigabit Ethernet transceivers and cables. Table 3 lists the supported transceiver options.

Table 3.        Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnect‒supported transceiver and cable support matrix

Note:       

1.     FI 6454 supports 1G optics on ports 45-48. FI 64108 supports 1G optics on ports 89-96.

2.     Transceiver modules and cables that are supported on a specific Fabric Interconnect are not always supported on all VIC adapters, I/O modules, or Fabric Extenders that are compatible with that Fabric Interconnect. Detailed compatibility matrices for the transceiver modules are available here: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/interfaces-modules/transceiver-modules/products-device-support-tables-list.html.

3.     SFP-10/25G-LR-S and SFP-10/25G-CSR-S currently works only at 25G speed. (i.e., FI 6454 supported ports 1-48 & FI 64108 supported ports 1-96)

4.     S-Class transceivers do not support FCoE at 10G and 40G speeds

5.     QSFP-4X10G-LR-S is supported only for uplink ports.

Cabling

Table 4 provides 10-, 25-, 40-, and 100-Gigabit Ethernet cabling specifications for Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects.

Table 4.        10-, 25-, 40-, and 100-Gigabit Ethernet cabling specifications

Performance

●      Cisco UCS 6454: Layer 2 hardware forwarding at 3.82 Tbps and 1.2 billion packets per second (bpps)

●      Cisco UCS 64108: Layer 2 hardware forwarding at 7.42 Tbps and 2.8 billion packets per second (bpps)

●      MAC address table entries: 32,000

●      Low-latency cut-through design: Provides predictable, consistent traffic latency regardless of packet size, traffic pattern, or enabled features

Layer 2

●      Ethernet switch mode

●      Fibre Channel switch mode

●      Layer 2 interconnect ports and 3K VLANs

●      IEEE 802.1Q VLAN encapsulation

●      Support Virtual SANs (VSANs) per interconnect

●      Rapid Per-VLAN Spanning Tree Plus RPVST+

●      Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) Versions 1, 2, and 3 snooping

●      Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP): IEEE 802.3ad

●      Advanced EtherChannel hashing based on Layer 2, 3, and 4 information

●      Jumbo frames on all ports (up to 9216 bytes)

●      Pause frames (IEEE 802.3x)

●      FC/FCoE slow drain detection and recovery

●      Port security

Quality of Service (QoS)

●      Layer 2 IEEE 802.1p (class of service)

●      Sixteen hardware queues per port (FCoE plus five user-defined)

●      Class-of-Service(CoS)‒based egress queuing

●      Egress port-based scheduling: Weighted Round-Robin (WRR)

●      Priority-based flow control (802.1Qbb)

●      Enhanced transmission selection (802.1Qaz)

High availability

●      Hot-swappable field-replaceable power suppliers, fan modules, and expansion modules

●      1+1 power redundancy

●      N+1 fan module redundancy

Management

●      Interconnect management using redundant 10/100/1000 Mbps management or console ports

●      All management provided through Cisco UCS Manager. Please refer to the Cisco UCS Manager data sheet for more information about management interfaces

Low-latency, lossless 10/25/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet unified network fabric

●      PFC (per priority pause frame support)

●      Data Center Bridging Exchange (DCBX) Protocol

●      IEEE 802.1Qaz: bandwidth management

Unified ports

●      Cisco UCS 6400 Series can be configurable as 10- and 25-Gigabit Ethernet or 8/16/32-Gbps Fibre Channel

Industry standards

●      IEEE 802.1p: CoS prioritization

●      IEEE 802.1Q: VLAN tagging

●      IEEE 802.1s: multiple VLAN instances of Spanning Tree Protocol

●      IEEE 802.1w: rapid reconfiguration of Spanning Tree Protocol

●      IEEE 802.3: Ethernet

●      IEEE 802.3ad: LACP

●      IEEE 802.3ae: 10-Gigabit Ethernet

●      IEEE 802.3by: 25-Gigabit Ethernet

●      IEEE 802.3bg: 40-Gigabit Ethernet

●      IEEE 802.3bm: 100-Gigabit Ethernet

●      SFP28 support

●      QSFP28 support

●      Remote Monitoring (RMON)

Physical specifications

SFP28 and QSFP28 optics

Cisco UCS products support 10-, 25-, 40-, and 100-Gigabit Ethernet SFP28 and QSFP28 copper Twinax cables for short distances, and SFP28 and QSFP28 optics for longer distances. SFP28 and QSFP28 have several advantages compared to other Ethernet connectivity options:

●      10-, 25-, 40-, and 100-Gigabit Ethernet form factor

●      Low power consumption

●      Hot-swappable devices

Table 5 summarizes the Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnect specifications.

Table 5.        Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnect specifications^****

Cisco UCS 6400 Series physical and environmental specifications

Table 6 summarizes the physical and environmental specifications for Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects.

Table 6.        Physical and environmental specifications

Weight

Table 7 summarizes the weights for the Cisco UCS 6400 Series.

Table 7.        Weight, including power supplies and fan modules

Regulatory standards compliance: safety and EMC

Table 8 summarizes regulatory compliance for the Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects.

Table 8.        Regulatory standards compliance: safety and EMC

Ordering information

Table 9 presents ordering information for Cisco UCS 6400 Fabric Interconnects.

Table 9.        Ordering information

Warranty information

Find warranty information at Cisco.com on the Product Warranties page.

Cisco environmental sustainability

Information about Cisco’s environmental sustainability policies and initiatives for our products, solutions, operations, and extended operations or supply chain is provided in the “Environment Sustainability” section of Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report.

Reference links to information about key environmental sustainability topics (mentioned in the “Environment Sustainability” section of the CSR Report) are provided in the following table:

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Cisco Services for Unified Computing

Using a unified view of data-center resources, Cisco and our industry-leading partners deliver services that accelerate your transition to a unified computing architecture. Cisco Services for Unified Computing help you quickly deploy your data center resources, simplify ongoing operations, and optimize your infrastructure to better meet your business needs. For more information about these and other Cisco services for the data center, visit https://www.cisco.com/go/unifiedcomputingservices.

Why Cisco?

The Cisco Unified Computing System continues Cisco’s long history of innovation in delivering integrated systems for improved business results based on industry standards and using the network as the platform. Recent examples include IP telephony, LAN switching, unified communications, and unified I/O. Cisco began the unified computing phase of our unified data center strategy several years ago by assembling an experienced team from the computing and virtualization industries to augment our own networking and storage access expertise. As a result, Cisco delivered foundational technologies, including the Cisco Nexus^® Family, supporting unified fabric and server virtualization. Cisco UCS completes this phase, delivering innovation in architecture, technology, partnerships, and services. Cisco is well positioned to deliver this innovation by taking a systems approach to computing that unifies network intelligence and scalability with innovative ASICs, integrated management, and standard computing components.

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For more information

For more information about Cisco UCS, visit https://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10265/index.html.