Cisco N5K-C5020P-BF Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

2. Suffix Breakdown & Official Chassis Definition

• N5K: Nexus 5000 unified fabric switch family
• C5020: 40-port 2RU Nexus 5020 base model
• P: All ports are SFP+ 10G pluggable fiber ports (no fixed copper RJ45 ports)
• BF: Bare Frame bare chassis (no factory pre-populated AC power supplies; fan trays are integrated inside the chassis)

Factory Pre-Integrated Hardware Included in N5K-C5020P-BF

1. 2RU standard 19-inch rack-mount passive midplane chassis
2. Five hot-swappable redundant fan modules (4+1 fan redundancy, factory pre-installed)
3. 40 fixed SFP+ 10G/FCoE front panel ports (all ports support lossless DCB and FCoE storage traffic)
4. Two empty rear hot-swappable expansion module slots
5. Complete management interface set: RJ45 serial console, dual 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band management Ethernet, USB diagnostic flash port
6. Standard 19-inch rack mounting rails, front cable management brackets, hardware installation & safety documentation

Items Not Included (Must Be Purchased Separately)

• N5K-PAC-550W 550W AC hot-swappable power supplies (minimum one PSU for operation; two PSUs for 1+1 redundant power architecture)
• SFP+/SFP optical transceivers, Twinax copper DAC cables for all front and expansion ports
• N5K-M series expansion modules (Ethernet/FCoE hybrid or native Fibre Channel uplink cards)
• Add-on software feature licenses: FCoE Enabler, L3 Routing, VDC, MPLS XL scale, DMM Data Migration, IOA Acceleration
• Optional accessories: Lockable front door, extended cable management kits, air filter panels

3. Core Hardware Port & Slot Layout

Front Panel Fixed Ports (40 × SFP+ 10G)

Rear Dual Expansion Module Slots (2 independent hot-swappable OIR slots)

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

Rear Power & Fan Subsystems

• Two empty hot-swappable AC power supply bays (PSUs sold separately, OIR hot-swap replacement supported)
• Five pre-installed hot-swappable multi-fan trays (4+1 redundancy; single fan tray fault triggers SNMP alert without traffic shutdown)

Out-of-Band Management Interfaces

1. RJ45 RS232 serial console port for local CLI configuration
2. Dual independent 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band management Ethernet ports
3. External USB Type-A flash storage port for NX-OS firmware upgrades, running configuration backup and offline diagnostics

Front Panel LED Status Array

4. Hardware Performance Specifications

1. Full non-blocking crossbar fabric aggregate bandwidth: 1.04 Tbps full-duplex
2. Wire-speed frame forwarding throughput: 780 Mpps at maximum 10G port speed
3. Cut-through switching latency: ~3.2 microseconds for fixed-size data center packets
4. Layer 2 MAC address table capacity: 16,000 base entries, expandable via XL scale license
5. Maximum VLAN segmentation: 4094 VLANs per logical partition
6. Port-channel limit: 1024 LACP logical trunk bundles, maximum 16 physical ports per vPC/ISL port-channel
7. Maximum supported Nexus 2000 FEX fabric extenders: 24 FEX leaf units per chassis
8. Native ASIC hardware offload feature suite:
   • Complete lossless FCoE stack: PFC priority flow control, ETS bandwidth allocation, VNTag, FC-NVMe low-latency tunneling
   • OTV cross-data-center overlay encapsulation, LISP endpoint mapping for multi-pod workload mobility
   • FCIP tunnel compression, write acceleration, tape pipelining for long-distance disaster recovery backup replication
   • DMM non-disruptive data migration, IOA storage I/O acceleration, real-time streaming telemetry export

Supervisor Integrated Core Specs (Onboard, No Separate Supervisor Card)

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Rack form factor: 2 RU (8.8 cm tall), standard 19-inch EIA horizontal rack mount
• External dimensions (H × W × D): 8.8 cm × 43.9 cm × 76.2 cm; extended depth 88.6cm with cable management kit installed
• Bare chassis weight (N5K-C5020P-BF only, five fan trays pre-installed, no PSUs/expansion modules): ~20 kg (44 lbs)
• Fully loaded maximum weight (two AC PSUs + two expansion modules): ~23 kg (50 lbs)
• Operating ambient temperature range: 0°C ~ 40°C (32°F ~ 104°F); certified altitude up to 3000m (10,000 ft)
• Storage temperature range: -40°C ~ 70°C (-40°F ~ 158°F)
• Relative humidity: 5%–95% 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 5, FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validated

N5K-PAC-550W AC Power Supply Spec (Separate Order Item)

5. Full NX-OS Feature Set Supported

Layer 2 Ethernet & Converged FCoE Storage Fabric

• Single default VDC architecture (Nexus 5000 series does not support multiple independent VDC partitions)Cisco
• 802.1Q VLAN tagging, PVLAN private VLAN anti-spoofing isolation
• MSTP multi-instance spanning tree protocol for Layer 2 loop prevention, vPC dual-active peer-link redundancy for storage/Ethernet uplinks
• Complete lossless FCoE protocol stack: VSAN virtual storage fabrics, hard WWN zoning, Auto-Zone automatic fabric provisioning, FC-NVMe low-latency forwarding
• NPV/NPIV FCoE edge virtualization to reduce upstream MDS SAN director control-plane load
• Slow drain detection and buffer credit congestion isolation hardware feature to eliminate packet loss for lossless storage traffic
• POAP Power On Auto Provisioning zero-touch automatic switch deployment for mass rack rollouts
• Native Nexus 2000 FEX fabric extender support for high-density server leaf access aggregation

Multilayer Routing & Cross-Data Center Interconnect Features

• Dynamic IPv4/IPv6 routing protocols: OSPF, EIGRP, BGP (L3 feature license mandatory)
• VRF virtual routing and forwarding multi-tenant Layer 3 traffic isolation
• Licensed IVR Inter-VSAN Routing for secure 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, 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. Medium virtualized multi-pod data center ToR top-of-rack aggregation core: 40×10G front ports connect Nexus 2000 FEX leaf extenders and medium-scale all-flash NVMe FCoE storage arrays; two expansion slots can be populated with FC/FCoE hybrid modules to add storage uplinks, VDC + VSAN segmentation isolates production/test/backup converged LAN/SAN logical fabrics
2. Multi-building 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. 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-C5020P-BF peer switch for full site-wide HA fault tolerance
4. Medium-to-large MPLS service provider multi-tenant metro PoP edge gateway: VLAN/VSAN multi-tenant logical isolation separates independent enterprise customer LAN/SAN fabrics on a single chassis, unused dual expansion slots 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 40G/100G high-density port expansion, unified FCoE storage convergence and modern NX-OS OTV/LISP cross-data-center automation workflows
6. Centralized 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 two expansion slots available for additional FC/FCoE port expansion or encryption/replication service module additions as enterprise storage compliance requirements expand

7. Standard Package Contents of N5K-C5020P-BF Bare Chassis SKU

Separately Mandatory Components (Not Included in Bare Chassis)

• One / two N5K-PAC-550W 550W AC hot-swappable redundant power supply units (DC variant N5K-DC-550W-WS for telecom deployments)
• Optional N5K-M series expansion line/service modules for two rear expansion slots
• SFP+/QSFP+ optical fiber transceivers for all 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, locking front door, air filter kit

Short Commercial Catalog Summary for Quotation