he Cisco Nexus® 5600 platform is the third generation of the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches: the industry’s leading data center server access switches. The Cisco Nexus 5600 platform switches can be categorized into 10-Gbps and 40-Gbps switches. This data sheet focuses on the 10-Gbps switches only. Cisco Nexus 5600 platform 10-Gbps switches are the successors to the industry’s widely adopted Cisco Nexus 5500 platform switches. The switches maintain all the existing Cisco Nexus 5500 platform features, including LAN and SAN convergence (unified ports and Fibre Channel over Ethernet [FCoE]), fabric extenders, and Cisco® FabricPath. In addition, the Cisco Nexus 5600 platform 10-Gbps switches bring integrated line-rate Layer 2 and 3 capabilities with true 40 Gigabit Ethernet support (on uplink and network-facing ports), Cisco programmable fabric innovations, Network Virtualization Using Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE), Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) bridging and routing, network programmability and visibility, large buffer capacity, and significantly greater scalability and performance for highly virtualized, automated, and cloud environments.

The Cisco Nexus 5600 platform 10-Gbps switches include both 1-rack-unit (1RU) and 2RU switches built to meet the challenges of today’s data centers with a flexible, agile, and energy-efficient design. These 10-Gbps switches are an important component of the Cisco Unified Data Center architecture, complementing existing Cisco Nexus switches. These energy-efficient switches offer 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE, providing integrated Layer 2 and 3 features at wire speed and low latency of approximately 1 microsecond for any packet size. With a choice of port-side intake and fan-side intake airflow options to align with cold-aisle and hot-aisle placement in the data center, the 10-Gbps switches are designed for a broad range of traditional data center and large-scale virtualized cloud deployments.

The 10-Gbps switches together with the Cisco NX-OS Software operating system provides customers with features and capabilities that are widely deployed in data centers around the world. NX-OS is a purpose-built data center operating system designed for performance, resiliency, scalability, manageability, and programmability. It meets Ethernet and storage networking requirements, providing a robust and comprehensive feature set that can meet the demanding requirements of virtualization and automation in present and future data centers.

The Cisco Nexus 5600 platform 10-Gbps switches are designed for top-of-rack (ToR) and middle-of-row (MoR) deployment in data centers that support enterprise applications, service provider hosting, and cloud computing environments.