Cisco N77-C7710-40G Full Product Description

Critical Clarification

1. Short Overview

2. Definition of N77-C7710-40G

1) Physical hardware identical to base N77-C7710 bare chassis

• Form factor: 14RU 10-slot front panel modular switch
• Front slots: 8 full universal I/O line card slots + 2 half-slot redundant supervisor slots
• Rear: Six hot-swappable crossbar fabric module bays, four power supply bays, two independent fan trays
• Airflow: Fixed front-to-back cold aisle intake (no hardware difference vs standard N77-C7710)

2) What "-40G" Represents (Deployment Configuration Rules)

1. All I/O line cards deployed are 40G-dominant F3/M3 modules: N77-F324FQ-25 (24×40G QSFP+)
2. No 100G F4 line cards used in this "40G" targeted build; prioritizes 40G leaf-spine, FCoE storage uplinks, campus 40G aggregation
3. Full 40G transceiver support: QSFP-40G-SR4/LR4/CSR4/ER4, 40G active/passive QSFP break-out cables
4. Optimized buffer mode on M3 line cards for 40G high-concurrency lossless FCoE traffic
5. Software XL license enabled for extended MAC/route table scale to support large 40G multi-tenant fabrics

3. Components Not Included in Bare Chassis (Must Be Ordered Separately)

• Dual N77-SUP2E Supervisor 2E control modules
• Six N77-C7710-FAB-2 / FAB-3 crossbar fabric modules
• Three N77-C7710-FAN series fan trays
• Up to four N77-AC-3KW-WS 3kW AC redundant power supplies
• Eight N77-F324FQ-25 24-port 40G I/O line cards (max full 40G port density)
• QSFP+ 40G optical transceivers, break-out cables
• Feature licenses: C1-N7702 XL scale, IVR, OTV, FCIP, FICON, MPLS

3. Chassis Hardware & Slot Layout (Same as N77-C7710)

Front Panel 10 Horizontal Slots (14RU 19-inch rack)

1. Slots 1,2,3,4,7,8,9,10: Eight universal I/O line card slots (40G primary for N77-C7710-40G build):
   • N77-F324FQ-25: 24×40G QSFP+ F3 line card (standard for this 40G chassis configuration)
   • N77-M324FQ-25L: M3 multi-service 24×40G line card with FCIP/iSCSI gateway, L4-L7 offload
2. Slots 5,6: Dual half-slot N77-SUP2E supervisor slots (active/standby redundant control plane)

Rear Redundant Subsystems

1. Six N77-C7710-FAB-2/FAB-3 fabric module slots (464Gbps per slot Fabric-3, 42 Tbps full capacity)
2. Four hot-swappable 3kW AC power supply bays (3+1 N+1 redundant power)
3. Two independent hot-swappable multi-fan trays (system fan + dedicated fabric cooling fan tray)

Airflow & Management Interfaces

• Airflow: Front-to-back cold air intake, rear hot exhaust (standard enterprise cold aisle design)
• Per-supervisor management ports: Dual 1G out-of-band Ethernet, RS232 serial, mini USB local console, external USB flash storage
• Front panel LED array: Chassis health, power, fan, fabric, supervisor, I/O port link status, UID beacon

4. Key Performance Specs (40G-Optimized Configuration)

1. Full-chassis non-blocking fabric bandwidth: 42 Tbps full-duplex (six Fabric-3 modules fully populated)
2. Wire-speed forwarding rate: 42000 Mpps at full 40G line rate
3. Max 40G port capacity: 8 × 24 = 192 × 40G QSFP+ ports (no 100G line cards deployed in this -40G configuration)
4. Layer 2 MAC table: 128,000 entries (XL license enabled)
5. Layer 3 route scale: IPv4 128,000 / IPv6 64,000 / multicast 32,000 entries
6. VDC multi-tenant partitions: 8 independent logical switch domains
7. Port-channels: 1024 logical trunks, maximum 16 physical ports per vPC/ISL bundle
8. Native hardware offload suite for 40G/FCoE workloads:
   • Lossless FCoE stack: PFC, DCBX, VNTag, FC-NVMe low-latency tunneling
   • OTV cross-DC encapsulation, LISP endpoint mapping
   • FCIP tunnel compression, tape pipelining for long-distance backup replication
   • DMM non-disruptive data migration, IOA storage I/O acceleration

Supervisor-2E Core Specs

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Rack height: 14 RU (61.9cm tall), standard 19-inch EIA horizontal rack mount
• Full loaded weight (4×AC PSUs + two fan trays + six fabric modules + dual supervisors + eight 40G line cards): ~138kg (304lbs)
• Operating temperature: 0°C ~ 40°C; certified altitude up to 4000m
• Humidity: 8%–80% non-condensing operating
• Compliance: FCC Class A, UL 60950-1, CE, NEBS Level 3, GR63 seismic Zone 4, RoHS, FIPS 140-2 Level 2

5. Full NX-OS Feature Set Enabled for N77-C7710-40G 40G Fabric Deployments

Layer 2 & Converged FCoE Storage Fabric

• VDC virtual multi-tenant isolation (8 independent VDCs)
• 4094 VLANs per VDC, PVLAN anti-spoofing isolation
• Complete lossless FCoE protocol stack: VSAN storage fabrics, hard WWN zoning, Auto-Zone auto-provisioning, FC-NVMe low-latency forwarding over 40G QSFP+
• MSTP spanning tree loop prevention, vPC dual-active peer-link redundancy, SPAN/RSPAN remote traffic analytics
• NPV/NPIV FCoE edge virtualization to reduce upstream MDS SAN fabric load
• Slow drain detection and buffer credit congestion isolation for 40G high-concurrency storage traffic
• POAP zero-touch automatic switch provisioning for mass rack rollouts

Multilayer Routing & Cross-DC Interconnect

• OSPF / EIGRP / BGP IPv4/IPv6 dynamic routing, VRF multi-tenant Layer 3 isolation
• Licensed IVR Inter-VSAN Routing for cross-storage-fabric data forwarding over 40G uplinks
• OTV Overlay Transport Virtualization: Layer 2 workload mobility across geographically separated data centers
• LISP Locator/ID Separation Protocol: Multi-pod workload mobility
• Full carrier-grade MPLS 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 via 40G inter-DC links
• M3 40G service line card support for iSCSI multi-protocol gateway and L4-L7 traffic offload

QoS, Security & Automation

• Four hardware priority queues per 40G/FCoE port for tiered classification of storage I/O, VM east-west traffic, management and backup streams
• Ingress policing + egress bandwidth shaping to throttle low-priority tape backup/replication traffic
• Pre-built QoS templates optimized for 40G all-flash NVMe storage workloads, virtual server east-west traffic, disaster recovery replication
• Dedicated high-priority queue for low-latency real-time unified communications and enterprise database workloads
• DCBX media optimization for converged FCoE LAN/SAN traffic prioritization over 40G QSFP+ ports
• RBAC granular multi-tier admin access control, Cisco ISE identity services engine integration
• SSHv2 encrypted remote management, SNMPv3 secure monitoring, AES encrypted startup configurations, DH-CHAP FCoE inter-fabric link authentication
• FIPS 140-2 Level 2 compliance for financial, government and regulated enterprise deployments
• Cisco DCNM centralized graphical converged LAN/SAN fabric monitoring, provisioning and REST API automation
• Onboard Python interpreter + NX-API REST interfaces for custom data center automation scripts
• GOLD Generic Online Diagnostics continuous hardware health validation without production traffic interruption
• Real-time streaming telemetry export for 40G fabric throughput, latency and error monitoring

6. High Availability Architecture (Identical to Standard N77-C7710)

1. Dual native redundant Supervisor-2E control modules with stateful failover and non-disruptive ISSU firmware upgrades
2. Eight universal I/O line card expansion slots supporting full 192×40G port density
3. Six independent active-active load-sharing crossbar fabric modules delivering 42 Tbps non-blocking throughput
4. Up to four hot-swappable 3kW AC redundant power supplies (3+1 N+1 power redundancy)
5. Two separate independent hot-swappable fan trays for layered redundant cooling
6. Full OIR hot-swap maintenance support for all FRUs (fabric modules, fan trays, power supplies, supervisors, I/O line cards) without chassis power cycle
7. Front-to-back airflow design compatible with mainstream enterprise cold aisle rack layouts
8. Unified NX-OS feature parity with all Nexus 7700 family chassis

7. Typical Deployment Scenarios for N77-C7710-40G (40G-Optimized Build)

1. Large virtualized multi-pod data center core aggregation: 192×40G ports connect leaf Nexus 2000 FEX extenders, medium-scale all-flash NVMe FCoE storage arrays and high-density blade server racks; VDC + VSAN segmentation isolates production/test/backup logical fabrics
2. Multi-building enterprise campus core-edge converged switch: 40G inter-building ISL trunk links, built-in FCIP hardware offload provides asynchronous disaster recovery replication between primary and DR data centers
3. Medium-to-large financial/mainframe zSystems storage core: Native FCoE + FICON compatibility enables long-distance 40G FCIP tape backup replication; dual-chassis vPC peer architecture eliminates single point of failure
4. Medium MPLS service provider multi-tenant metro PoP edge gateway: VDC multi-tenant logical switch partitioning separates independent enterprise customer LAN/SAN fabrics on a single chassis, 40G core uplinks to provider backbone
5. Legacy Nexus 7000 40G fabric migration upgrade: Backward compatible with existing 40G QSFP+ transceivers while unlocking larger MAC/route tables, VDC virtual multi-tenant partitioning and modern NX-OS OTV/LISP cross-data-center automation workflows
6. Centralized enterprise tape library backup fabric aggregation core: Dedicated backup fabric switch using multi-port 40G FCIP PortChannel trunks to primary production FCoE SAN fabrics for asynchronous off-site tape archive replication workloads

8. Package & Ordering Clarification

• N77-C7710-40G is a deployment configuration label, not a standalone orderable PID
• Base physical chassis part number: N77-C7710 (bare empty frame)
• Required components to build full N77-C7710-40G 40G optimized switch:
  1 × N77-C7710 bare chassis
  2 × N77-SUP2E Supervisor 2E
  6 × N77-C7710-FAB-3 Fabric-3 crossbar modules
  2 × N77-C7710-FAN fan trays
  3–4 × N77-AC-3KW-WS 3kW AC power supplies
  8 × N77-F324FQ-25 24-port 40G I/O line cards
  C1-N7710 XL scale feature license + add-on feature licenses (OTV, FCIP, FICON, MPLS)
  SFP+/QSFP+ 40G optical transceivers, patch cables, rack mounting rails, cable management accessories

Short Commercial Summary