Cisco N5K-C5010P-BF Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

2. Suffix Breakdown & Chassis Definition

• N5K: Nexus 5000 unified fabric switch family
• C5010: 20-port 1RU Nexus 5010 base model
• P: All ports are SFP+ 10G pluggable ports (no fixed copper)
• BF: Bare chassis (no factory pre-installed power supplies; fans are pre-integrated)

Factory-Included Hardware in N5K-C5010P-BF

1. 1RU 19-inch rack-mount chassis
2. Two hot-swappable redundant fan modules pre-installed
3. 20 fixed SFP+ 10G/FCoE front ports (Ports 1–8 support dual-speed 1G/10G SFP/SFP+)
4. One rear hot-swappable expansion module slot
5. RJ45 serial console, out-of-band management Ethernet port, USB diagnostic port
6. Standard rack rails and installation documentation

Items Not Included (Mandatory Separate Orders)

• N5K-PAC-550W 550W AC hot-swappable power supplies (minimum 1 for operation, dual for 1+1 redundancy)
• SFP+/SFP optical transceivers / Twinax copper cables for all ports
• Expansion modules (Ethernet/FCoE or native Fibre Channel)
• Feature licenses: FCoE, L3 routing, VDC, MPLS, XL MAC/route scale
• Lockable front door, cable management accessories

3. Core Hardware Port & Slot Layout

Front Panel Fixed Ports (20 × SFP+)

• Ports 1–8: Dual-speed 1G/10G SFP/SFP+ (Ethernet + FCoE capable)
• Ports 9–20: Native 10G SFP+ only (Ethernet + FCoE capable)
• All ports support lossless FCoE, DCB (802.1Qbb PFC, 802.1Qaz ETS) for storage traffic convergence

Rear Expansion Slot (1 slot total)

1. N5K-M1604: 6×10G SFP+ FCoE/Ethernet module
2. N5K-M1404: 4×8G FC + 4×10G FCoE/Ethernet hybrid module
3. N5K-M8FC: 8×4G/2G/1G native Fibre Channel module
4. N5K-M6FC: 6×8G/4G/2G/1G native Fibre Channel module

Rear Power & Fan Slots

• Two empty power supply bays (AC PSUs purchased separately)
• Dual pre-installed hot-swappable fan trays (OIR replaceable without shutdown)

Management Interfaces

• RJ45 RS232 serial console port
• 1× 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band management Ethernet
• USB Type-A flash port for NX-OS image upgrades, config backup
• System LED bank: Power, fan, fabric, port link, global fault UID beacon

4. Hardware Performance Specifications

1. Switching fabric capacity: 520 Gbps full-duplex non-blocking crossbar
2. Forwarding throughput: 390 Mpps line-rate at 10G port speed
3. Cut-through switching latency: ~3.2 microseconds for fixed-size packets
4. MAC address table: 16,000 entries base; expandable via XL license
5. Maximum VLANs: 4094 VLANs per VDC
6. Port-channel limit: 1024 logical LACP port-channels, max 16 physical ports per bundle
7. Maximum Nexus 2000 FEX extenders supported: 12 FEX units per chassis
8. Native ASIC offload suite:
   • Lossless FCoE forwarding, PFC priority flow control, ETS enhanced transmission selection
   • FCIP tunnel compression, tape pipelining, DMM non-disruptive data migration
   • L2/L3 ACL, QoS queuing, vPC peer synchronization, LISP endpoint mapping

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Rack form factor: 1 RU (1.72 in / 4.37 cm height), standard 19-inch EIA rack
• Dimensions (H × W × D): 4.37 cm × 43.9 cm × 76.2 cm
• Bare chassis weight (with fans, no PSUs/modules): ~12.25 kg (27 lbs)
• Fully loaded weight (2×AC PSUs + 1 expansion module): ~15.88 kg (35 lbs)Cisco
• Operating temperature: 0°C ~ 40°C (32°F ~ 104°F); altitude certified up to 2000m
• Storage temperature: -40°C ~ 70°C
• Relative humidity: 8%–80% non-condensing operating
• Compliance: FCC Class A, UL 60950-1, CE, NEBS Level 3, RoHS 5, FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validated

Power Spec (N5K-PAC-550W AC PSU)

• Input: 100–240V AC universal, 50/60Hz
• Rated output: 550W per power supply; typical full-load draw ~450W
• Hot-swappable OIR replacement, N+1 redundant power architecture

5. Full NX-OS Feature Set

Layer 2 Ethernet & Converged FCoE Storage Fabric

• VDC Virtual Device Context multi-tenant logical switch isolation
• 802.1Q VLAN tagging, PVLAN private VLAN anti-spoofing isolation
• MSTP multi-instance spanning tree, vPC dual-active peer-link redundancy for storage/Ethernet uplinks
• Complete lossless FCoE protocol stack: VSAN virtual storage fabrics, hard WWN zoning, Auto-Zone auto-provisioning, FC-NVMe low-latency forwarding
• NPV/NPIV FCoE edge virtualization to offload upstream MDS SAN director control-plane load
• Slow drain detection and buffer credit congestion isolation for lossless storage traffic
• POAP zero-touch automatic switch provisioning for mass rack rollouts
• Nexus 2000 FEX fabric extender support for high-density server leaf access

Multilayer Routing & Cross-Data Center Interconnect

• Dynamic IPv4/IPv6 routing protocols: OSPF, EIGRP, BGP (L3 license required)
• VRF virtual routing and forwarding multi-tenant Layer 3 isolation
• Licensed IVR Inter-VSAN Routing for cross-storage-fabric data forwarding
• OTV Overlay Transport Virtualization: Layer 2 workload mobility across geographically separated disaster recovery data centers
• LISP Locator/ID Separation Protocol: Multi-pod workload mobility and distributed data center interconnection
• 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
• iSCSI multi-protocol gateway processing via M-series expansion modules 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 optimized for 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 over 10G SFP+ ports

Enterprise & Service Provider Security Suite

• Port security: Static MAC locking to block unauthorized physical server/storage device attachment
• RBAC 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 deployments
• 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 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. Typical Deployment Scenarios

1. Small/medium virtualized data center ToR top-of-rack core: 20×10G ports connect Nexus 2000 FEX leaf extenders and small-scale all-flash NVMe FCoE storage arrays, VDC + VSAN segmentation isolates production/test/backup converged LAN/SAN logical fabrics
2. Medium enterprise campus edge converged LAN/SAN switch: Interconnects remote building access switches via OTV cross-DC overlay tunnels, built-in FCIP hardware offload provides asynchronous disaster recovery replication between primary and DR data centers
3. Small-to-medium financial/mainframe zSystems converged storage core: Native FCoE + FICON compatibility enables long-distance FCIP tape backup replication, dual AC power redundancy paired with a second N5K-C5010P-BF peer switch for full site-wide HA fault tolerance
4. Small MPLS service provider multi-tenant metro PoP edge gateway: VDC multi-tenant logical switch isolation separates independent enterprise customer LAN/SAN fabrics on a single physical chassis, unused expansion slot reserved for future port count expansion or M-series L4-L7 service module upgrades
5. Legacy Catalyst / MDS fabric consolidation migration upgrade: Backward compatible with existing 10G SFP transceivers while unlocking unified FCoE storage convergence, VDC virtual multi-tenant partitioning and modern NX-OS OTV/LISP cross-data-center automation workflows
6. Centralized small enterprise tape library backup fabric aggregation core: Dedicated backup fabric switch utilizing multi-port FCIP PortChannel trunks to primary production FCoE SAN fabrics for asynchronous off-site tape archive replication workloads, with expansion slot available for additional FC/FCoE port expansion or encryption/replication service module additions as enterprise storage compliance requirements expand

7. Short Commercial Catalog Summary