Cisco Nexus 5548P

Cisco Nexus 5548P Switch
The Cisco Nexus 5548P Switch (Figure 1) is the first of the Cisco Nexus 5500 platform switches. It is a one-rack-unit (1RU) 10 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE switch offering up to 960-Gbps throughput and up to 48 ports. The switch has 32 1/10-Gbps fixed Enhanced Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP+) Ethernet and FCoE ports and one expansion slot.

Expansion Module Options for the Cisco Nexus 5548P
The Cisco Nexus 5500 platform is equipped with expansion modules that can be used to increase the number of 10 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE ports or to connect to Fibre Channel SANs with 8/4/2/1-Gbps Fibre Channel switch ports or both.
The Cisco Nexus 5548P supports the addition of one expansion module from the following three offerings (Figure 2):

- Ethernet module that provides sixteen 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE ports using the SFP+ interface

- Fibre Channel plus Ethernet module that provides eight 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE ports using the SFP+ interface and eight ports of 8/4/2/1-Gbps native Fibre Channel connectivity using the SFP+/SFP interface

- A unified port module that provides up to sixteen 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE ports using the SFP+ interface or up to 16 ports of 8/4/2/1-Gbps native Fibre Channel connectivity using the SFP+/SFP interface. The use of 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet or 8/4/2/1-Gbps Fibre Channel on a port is mutually exclusive but selectable for any of the 16 physical ports per module.

In addition to these expansion modules the Cisco Nexus 5548P supports a Layer 3 daughter card that can be ordered with the system or as a spare (field upgradable). This daughter card provides up to 160 Gbps of Layer 3 forwarding capability (240 million packets per second [mpps]) that can be shared by all 48 ports in the chassis. As shown in Figure 3 the Layer 3 daughter card does not take up one of the expansion slots on the rear of the chassis but instead is installed by replacing the I/O module that is located on the front of the chassis.