Cisco N77-C7706 (Nexus 7706) Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

2. Official Chassis Definition & Lifecycle

• Bare chassis PN:N77-C7706(empty frame without supervisors, fabric modules, power supplies, I/O line cards, transceivers; bundled SKUs like N77-C7706-B23S2E ship pre-populated with core hardware)
• EOL Timeline: EOS Oct 12, 2023; Final HW Support Oct 31, 2028

Core Hardware Differentiators vs N77-C7702 compact 2-slot chassis

1. Expanded slot scale: 4 universal full I/O line card slots (N77-C7702 only 1), peak 48×100G ports vs 12×100G on 7702Cisco
2. Independent external rear fabric subsystem: Six dedicated N77-C7706-FAB-2 fabric module slots (active-active parallel load-sharing, scalable total fabric bandwidth up to 21 Tbps); N77-C7702 uses embedded distributed fabric ASICs on I/O cards with no separate fabric modules and only 2.4 Tbps total capacity
3. Dual native half-slot supervisor slots (built-in full control-plane redundancy, supports dual Sup2/Sup2E out of box; N77-C7702 only single supervisor slot with no second native bay)Cisco
4. Triple separate hot-swappable fan trays (layered redundant cooling; N77-C7702 single integrated fan tray with limited cooling redundancy)Cisco
5. 9RU rack height (N77-C7702 compact 3RU), mainstream front-to-back airflow standard for large enterprise cold/hot aisle data center racks
6. Unified Nexus 7700 Gen3 module compatibility: All F3/M3 10/40/100G I/O line cards, Sup2/Sup2E supervisors fully interchangeable across all Nexus 7700 chassis to unify spare inventory
7. Complete converged LAN+SAN hardware offload: Lossless PFC/DCBX FCoE, FC-NVMe low-latency tunneling, full FICON zSystems storage integration without external gateway appliances

High-Availability Architecture

Model Suffix Breakdown

• N77: Nexus 7700 next-gen 100G modular data center switch platform prefix
• C7706: Bare empty 6-slot front chassis (4 I/O line card slots + 2 half-slot supervisor slots) + rear six fabric module slots
• Bare chassis N77-C7706 has no K9 suffix; pre-bundled hardware SKUs with supervisors/power supplies carry -2K9 / -B23S2E suffix
• Airflow fixed front-to-back cold intake (no separate E hot-aisle exhaust chassis variant)

3. Chassis Slot & Hardware Layout Definition

Front Panel 6 Horizontal Slots (9RU 19-inch rack)

1. Slots 1,2,3,4: Four universal hot-swappable I/O line/service module slots (F3/M3 10/40/100G Ethernet/FCoE switching cards, DS-X9334 FCIP multi-protocol extension modules, SSM encryption/asynchronous replication service modules)
   • N77-F348XP-23: 48×10G SFP+ high-density F3 series line card
   • N77-F324FQ-25: 24×40G QSFP+ F3 series line card
   • N77-F312CK-26: 12×100G QSFP28 F3 maximum-density line card (max 48×100G ports full chassis)
   • N77-M348XP-23L: 48×10G M3 mixed-feature line card with L4-L7 service offload, FCIP/iSCSI multi-protocol gateway capability
2. Slots 5,6: Dedicated half-slot Supervisor-2E / Supervisor-2 fabric control module slots (dual redundant native to chassis, active/standby deployment standard)

Rear Panel Redundant Subsystems

1. Up to six independent hot-swappable N77-C7706-FAB-2 crossbar fabric switching modules (220Gbps per fabric channel, parallel load-sharing for scalable 21 Tbps total throughput)
2. Three independent hot-swappable multi-fan variable-speed fan tray bays (N77-C7706-FAN) for layered redundant cooling
3. Up to three hot-swappable power supply bays supporting AC 3kW / 3.5kW HV HVDC / DC 3kW power modules (N+1 redundant power protection)

Out-of-Band Management Interfaces (each Supervisor module carries full management ports)

• RJ45 RS232 serial console port for local CLI access
• Mini USB dual local console port for laptop zero-cable administration
• Dual isolated 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band Ethernet management ports (separate SAN analytics export dedicated interface)
• External USB Type-A flash storage slot for NX-OS image upgrades, configuration backup and syslog export
• Physical reset button for factory default configuration recovery

Front Global Diagnostic LED Bank

Airflow Specification

Supported Transceivers & Pluggable Modules

1. Ethernet/FCoE optical transceivers (sold separately for all line card ports):
   • SFP+: 10G-SR/LR/ER for 10G Ethernet / lossless FCoE storage traffic
   • QSFP+: 40G-SR4/LR4 for 40G Ethernet / long-distance ISL trunk links
   • QSFP28: 100G-SR4/LR4 for 100G high-density uplink/host ports
   • Backward compatible with legacy 1G SFP transceivers for existing access switch interoperation
2. Supervisor module compatibility: Supervisor-2 (N77-SUP2), Supervisor-2E (N77-SUP2E upgraded larger memory, enhanced FCoE telemetry NPU, Secure Boot)
3. Fabric module compatibility: N77-C7706-FAB-2 Generation2 crossbar fabric modules (six required for full 21 Tbps chassis bandwidth)
4. Power supply compatibility: 3000W AC PEM modules (N77-AC-3KW-WS), 3000W DC PEM telecom modules (N77-DC-3KW-WS), 3.5kW HV HVDC power supplies (N77-HV-3.5KW-WS), non-interchangeable between AC/HV chassis variants

4. Hardware & Physical Performance Specifications

Core Switching & Routing Performance

1. Full-chassis parallel crossbar fabric maximum aggregate bandwidth: 21 Tbps full-duplex system-wide throughput with six Fabric-2 modules fully loadedCisco
2. Wire-speed frame forwarding rate: Up to 21000 Mpps Ethernet frame switching at full 100G line rate
3. Low-latency distributed shared packet buffer pool per line card, dedicated buffer credit allocation for lossless FCoE storage traffic
4. MAC address table capacity: 128,000 MAC entries
5. IPv4 unicast route table capacity: 128,000 entries; IPv6 unicast: 64,000 entries; multicast routes: 32,000 entries
6. Maximum isolated VDC virtual switch contexts: 8 independent logical switch partitions + 1 admin VDC
7. Maximum active port-channel bundles: 1024 PortChannels, max 16 ports per logical trunk with dynamic load balancing
8. Supported Ethernet port operating modes: Access, Trunk, FCoE, vPC peer-link, ISL inter-switch trunk, FEX host interface
9. NPV/NPIV native hardware acceleration: Lossless FCoE forwarding for SAN-LAN convergence, offload Fibre Channel fabric registration to upstream MDS directors without core fabric control-plane overhead
10. Native multi-protocol ASIC hardware offload suite: FC-NVMe ultra-low-latency frame tunneling, FCoE lossless PFC/DCBX/VNTag processing, vPC peer synchronization, OTV cross-DC encapsulation, LISP endpoint mapping, FCIP tunnel compression/tape pipelining, DMM non-disruptive data migration, IOA storage I/O acceleration, onboard streaming telemetry export

Power & Cooling System

• Power supply bays: 3 hot-swappable redundant slots, each 3000W AC PSU fully powers complete chassis independently (N+1 failover protection)
• AC input voltage range: 100–240V AC (10% tolerance), 50/60Hz universal alternating current, 80 Plus Platinum high efficiency
• Fan trays: Three independent hot-swappable multi-fan variable-speed assemblies; minimum two full fan trays functional to avoid thermal shutdown, single fan tray failure triggers SNMP fault alert
• Real-time telemetry monitoring: Fan rotational speed, internal chassis ambient temperature, PSU input/output voltage, SFP optical transmit power, port error counters and module fault logging via console syslog and SNMP v1/v2c/v3 traps; critical thermal alarm threshold at 55°C short-term emergency operationCisco
• Typical full-load power draw: 420W fully populated with four 48-port 100G line cards + dual supervisors + six fabric modules + three AC power supplies under maximum traffic load
• MTBF: 210,000 hours under standard enterprise data center operating conditions

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Rack form factor: 9 RU standard 19-inch horizontal rack mount
• Dimensions (H × W × D): 40.0 cm × 43.9 cm × 81.3 cm (9 rack units, 17.3 × 32.0 inch depth; extended depth 93.7cm with cable management guide installed)Cisco
• Bare chassis weight (N77-C7706 empty frame only, no fans/PSUs/supervisors/fabric/line cards): 65.8 kg (145 lbs)
• Fully loaded maximum weight (three AC PSUs + three fan trays + six fabric modules + dual supervisors + four 48-port 100G line cards): ~92 kg (203 lbs)
• Operating ambient temperature range: 0°C to 40°C (32°F to 104°F); certified altitude up to 2000m
• Storage temperature range: -40°C to 70°C (-40°F to 158°F)
• Relative humidity: 8%–80% non-condensing operating; 5%–90% non-condensing storage
• Compliance Certifications: FCC Class A, UL 60950-1, CE, VCCI Class A, NEBS Level 3, GR63 seismic Zone 4, RoHS, FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validated

Supervisor-2E (N77-SUP2E) Built-in Hardware Specs

• Dual-core x86 enterprise CPU, 16GB DRAM, 16GB internal compact flash storage
• Dual 1G out-of-band management Ethernet ports, RS232 serial + mini USB local dual console ports
• External USB flash port for NX-OS image/config backup and offline diagnostics
• Dedicated onboard NPU for real-time streaming LAN/SAN performance telemetry export

5. Full NX-OS Multilayer Feature Set Supported

Layer 2 Ethernet & Converged FCoE Storage Fabric Services

• VDC Virtual Device Context: Logical multi-tenant switch partitioning to isolate production/test/backup LAN/SAN workloads on single physical chassis (8 user VDCs + admin VDC)
• Standard VLAN segmentation (4094 VLANs per VDC), PVLAN private VLAN anti-spoofing isolation
• Complete lossless FCoE protocol stack: VSAN virtual storage fabrics, hard WWN zoning + Auto-Zone automatic fabric provisioning, FC-NVMe low-latency forwarding
• MSTP multi-instance spanning tree for Layer 2 loop prevention, vPC dual-active peer-link redundancy, SPAN/RSPAN remote traffic mirroring for multi-session performance troubleshooting
• NPV N_Port Virtualizer edge switch mode for large-scale core-edge SAN-LAN convergence architecture deployment
• Slow drain detection and buffer credit congestion isolation hardware feature to eliminate lossless storage traffic packet loss
• POAP Power On Auto Provisioning zero-touch automatic switch deployment for mass rack rollouts

Multilayer Routing & Cross-Data Center Interconnect Features

• Dynamic IPv4/IPv6 routing protocols: OSPF, EIGRP, BGP
• VRF virtual routing and forwarding multi-tenant Layer 3 isolation
• Licensed IVR Inter-VSAN Routing feature for secure cross-storage-fabric data forwarding
• OTV Overlay Transport Virtualization: Cross-DC Layer 2 workload mobility for disaster recovery deployments
• LISP Locator/ID Separation Protocol: Multi-pod workload mobility and geographically distributed data center interconnection
• Full carrier-grade MPLS service suite: LDP, VPLS, VPWS, EVPN-FC dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 multi-tenant transport
• FCIP tunnel hardware acceleration: Lossless compression, write acceleration, tape pipelining for long-distance off-site tape backup replication
• iSCSI multi-protocol gateway processing via M3 service line cards for IP-attached server consolidation

Advanced QoS & Traffic Prioritization

• Four hardware priority queues per Ethernet/FCoE port for tiered classification of storage I/O, virtual machine east-west traffic, management and backup streams
• Ingress frame policing and egress bandwidth shaping to throttle low-priority tape backup and replication traffic
• Pre-built QoS templates for production OLTP database workloads, all-flash NVMe storage, virtual server east-west traffic, tape backup archives, and disaster recovery replication
• Dedicated high-priority traffic queue for low-latency real-time unified communications and enterprise database workloads
• DCBX media optimization for converged FCoE LAN/SAN traffic prioritization

Enterprise & Service Provider Security Suite

• Port security: Static MAC locking to block unauthorized physical server/storage device attachment
• RBAC Role-Based Access Control granular multi-tier administrative access control, integrated with Cisco ISE identity services engine
• SSHv2 encrypted remote management, SNMPv3 secure monitoring, AES encrypted startup configurations, DH-CHAP FCoE inter-fabric link authentication
• Port lockdown, VDC / VSAN read-only access permissions, complete audit logging for all fabric configuration changes
• FIPS 140-2 Level 2 compliance for government and financial regulated enterprise environments
• Cisco TrustSec security group tagging for end-to-end policy segmentation across campus and data center domains
• IPv6 over Fibre Channel support for modern dual-stack management networks
• Secure Boot and anti-counterfeit hardware validation to prevent unauthorized firmware tampering

Monitoring & SAN/LAN Management Tools

• Cisco DCNM / Fabric Manager centralized graphical converged LAN/SAN fabric monitoring, provisioning and REST API automation
• Dual isolated out-of-band Ethernet management ports for offline device access during fabric-wide outages and analytics export
• External USB flash storage for offline NX-OS firmware image upgrades, running configuration backup archives and syslog export
• Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) automatic Nexus/MDS fabric neighbor device discovery
• Real-time storage/LAN telemetry: Port throughput, latency, frame error counters, SFP+ optical transmit power diagnostics, onboard NPU streaming analytics export
• Event notification via email, syslog and SNMP traps for real-time fabric fault alerting
• GOLD Generic Online Diagnostics continuous hardware health validation without production traffic interruption
• Onboard Python interpreter + NX-API REST interfaces for custom data center automation scripts

6. High Availability Capabilities (Core Differentiators vs N77-C7702 Compact 2-Slot Chassis)

1. Dual redundant Supervisor-2/2E fabric control modules native to chassis with stateful failover and ISSU non-disruptive firmware upgrades (N77-C7702 only single factory supervisor slot with no second built-in bay)
2. Four universal I/O line card expansion slots vs one on N77-C7702, supporting up to 48×100G total port density
3. Six independent active-active crossbar fabric modules delivering 21 Tbps full non-blocking throughput (N77-C7702 embedded distributed fabric limited to 2.4 Tbps)
4. Three separate independent hot-swappable fan trays for layered redundant cooling (N77-C7702 single integrated fan tray with limited fault tolerance)
5. Up to three hot-swappable high-efficiency 3kW AC redundant power supplies (N+1 triple power redundancy; N77-C7702 only dual PSUs with 1+1 limited redundancy)
6. Full OIR hot-swap maintenance for all critical FRUs: fabric modules, fan trays, supervisors, line cards, power supplies without chassis power cycle
7. Front-to-back airflow design compatible with mainstream large enterprise cold aisle rack deployments (N77-C7702 uses side-to-back airflow for small pod racks)
8. Unified NX-OS software stack with native EVPN, OTV, LISP, VDC, FCoE and REST API automation feature set fully consistent with all Nexus 7700 family chassis
9. 9RU rack footprint for large core aggregation deployments (N77-C7702 compact 3RU for small pod top-of-row edge core)
10. Limitation: Fixed four I/O slot ceiling with no expansion beyond built-in line card bays, legacy maximum 100G Ethernet hardware generation, end-of-sale since Oct 12, 2023, hardware support expiring Oct 31, 2028.

7. Typical Deployment Scenarios

1. Large Virtualized Multi-Pod Data Center Core SAN-LAN Switch
   9RU modular rack form factor deployed as campus central SAN/LAN core aggregation switch; four 48-port 100G F3 line cards populate all I/O slots for 48 total 100G ports connecting distributed building N77-C7702 pod core switches, large-scale all-flash NVMe FCoE storage arrays and massive blade server racks, dual redundant supervisors + six active fabric modules deliver zero-failover fabric reliability, VDC + VSAN segmentation isolates independent departmental production, test and backup converged LAN/SAN logical fabrics.
2. Multi-Building Enterprise Campus Core-Edge SAN-LAN Fabric
   Multiple N77-C7706 large core directors deployed per primary data center storage rack, utilizing mixed 10G/40G long-distance LR ISL trunk links to interconnect geographically distributed campus storage pods, triple redundant fan trays + triple power supplies ensure stable cooling/power during hardware maintenance, built-in FCIP hardware offload provisions asynchronous cross-site disaster recovery replication tunnels between primary and DR data centers.
3. Medium-Large Regional Mission-Critical Headquarters Converged Storage/LAN Switch
   Financial, healthcare and government headquarters deployments require complete triple power + dual layered fan trays + dual supervisors + six fabric module hardware redundancy to avoid site-wide catastrophic database and tape backup storage outages; integrated FICON-compatible FCoE support enables long-distance cross-site DR replication via FCIP tunnels, VDC multi-tenant logical switch partitioning supports mixed enterprise and agency workloads on a single large chassis.
4. Medium-Large MPLS Service Provider Multi-Tenant Metro PoP Edge Gateway
   Native full MPLS/VPLS/EVPN carrier-grade feature set and VDC multi-tenant logical switch isolation make N77-C7706 ideal for large metro PoP edge deployments, terminating large-scale 10G/40G enterprise customer access circuits and multi-port ISL core backbone trunks to separate independent customer LAN/SAN fabrics, unused I/O slots reserved for future growth in customer port count and L4-L7 service M3 line card upgrades.
5. Legacy Large-Scale SAN-LAN Fabric Consolidation Migration Director
   Drop-in performance upgrade for aging Nexus 7000 series large core switches, fully backward compatible with existing 10G SFP transceivers while unlocking 40G/100G high-density port expansion, VDC virtual multi-tenant partitioning and modern NX-OS cross-data-center OTV/LISP automation workflows.
6. Hyperscale Centralized Enterprise Tape Library Backup Fabric Aggregation Core
   Deployed as dedicated backup SAN aggregation core switch, utilizing multi-port FCIP PortChannel trunk links to primary production FCoE SAN fabrics via asynchronous off-site tape archive and disaster recovery replication workloads, with unused I/O slots available for high-density host port expansion or SSM encryption/replication service line card additions as enterprise storage compliance requirements expand.

8. Standard Package Contents (Bare Chassis N77-C7706 Base SKU)

Items Sold Separately (Mandatory Components Not Included in Bare Chassis)

• Up to three N77-AC-3KW-WS 3000W AC hot-swappable redundant power supply units (DC variant N77-DC-3KW-WS for telecom deployments)
• Two redundant N77-SUP2 / N77-SUP2E fabric control modules (mandatory for full dual control-plane HA operation)
• Up to six N77-C7706-FAB-2 crossbar fabric switching modules (six required for full 21 Tbps chassis bandwidth)
• Three N77-C7706-FAN hot-swappable multi-fan cooling trays (minimum two required for thermal compliance)
• Optional Nexus 7700 family pluggable I/O line/service modules (48-port 10/40/100G F3 switching module, N77-M3 multi-protocol FCIP/iSCSI L4-L7 service module, SSM storage encryption/replication module)
• SFP+/QSFP+/QSFP28 optical fiber transceivers for all base Ethernet/FCoE port interfaces (backward compatible with legacy 1G SFP transceivers)
• Optional feature software licenses: IVR Inter-VSAN Routing, FCIP SAN Extension Enabler, Mainframe FCoE Enabler, OTV Data Center Interconnect, IOA I/O Acceleration, DMM Data Migration, MPLS XL Scale
• RS232 serial console rollover cable, mini USB console cable, fiber/copper patch cords, rack cable management accessories

Short Commercial Catalog Summary for Quotation