Cisco N5K-C5020P-BF-XL Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

2. Suffix Breakdown & Core Difference vs N5K-C5020P-BF

• N5K: Nexus 5000 unified fabric switch family
• C5020: 40-port 2RU Nexus 5020 base chassis
• P: All ports are SFP+ 10G pluggable fiber ports (no fixed copper RJ45)
• BF: Bare Frame (no factory pre-installed power supplies; fans integrated)
• XL: Factory preloaded XL extended scale software license (no separate license part required)

Key Distinction from standard N5K-C5020P-BF

1. N5K-C5020P-BF: Bare chassis only, no embedded XL license; XL scale license must be purchased and installed manually
2. N5K-C5020P-BF-XL: Same physical hardware, factory flash contains permanent XL license to enable extended MAC, route, FEX scale limits out of box

Factory Pre-Integrated Hardware

1. 2RU 19-inch rack-mount passive midplane chassis
2. Five hot-swappable redundant fan modules (4+1 fan redundancy, pre-installed)
3. 40 fixed SFP+ 10G/FCoE front ports (all dual-speed 1G/10G SFP/SFP+ capable)
4. Two rear hot-swappable expansion module slots
5. Full management interface set: RJ45 serial console, dual 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band management Ethernet, USB diagnostic flash port
6. Factory pre-activated XL extended scale license stored in internal flash
7. Standard rack rails and installation documentation

Items Not Included (Must Order Separately)

• N5K-PAC-550W / N5K-PAC-1200W AC hot-swappable power supplies (min 1 for operation, dual for N+1 redundancy)
• SFP+/SFP optical transceivers, Twinax copper DAC cables for all ports
• N5K-M series expansion modules (hybrid Ethernet/FCoE or native Fibre Channel uplink cards)
• Additional feature licenses: FCoE Enabler, L3 Routing, MPLS, DMM Data Migration, IOA Acceleration (XL only expands table scale, does not include these functional feature packs)
• Optional accessories: Lockable front door, extended cable management kit, air filter panel

3. Hardware Port & Slot Layout (Hardware Identical to N5K-C5020P-BF)

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

Rear Dual Expansion Slots (2 independent OIR hot-swappable 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 native Fibre Channel module

Rear Power & Fan Subsystems

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

Management Interfaces

• RJ45 RS232 serial console port
• Dual independent 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band management Ethernet ports
• USB Type-A flash port for NX-OS image upgrades, config backup and offline diagnostics

Front Panel LED Status Array

4. Hardware Performance Specifications (XL License Expands Scale Limits)

1. Full non-blocking crossbar fabric aggregate bandwidth: 1.04 Tbps full-duplex
2. Wire-speed forwarding throughput: 780 Mpps at 10G port speed
3. Cut-through switching latency: ~3.2 microseconds for fixed-size data center packets
4. MAC address table capacity:
   • Base (non-XL): 16,000 MAC entries
   • XL licensed (this model): 32,000 MAC entries (double scale)
5. Maximum VLANs: 4094 VLANs (unchanged)
6. Port-channel limit: 1024 logical LACP port-channels, max 16 physical ports per bundle
7. Maximum Nexus 2000 FEX extenders supported:
   • Base: 12 FEX units
   • XL licensed: 24 FEX units (double FEX scale)
8. Route table capacity, multicast groups, ACL entry limits all expanded via factory XL license
9. Native ASIC hardware offload suite:
   • 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
   • FCIP tunnel compression, write acceleration, tape pipelining, DMM non-disruptive data migration, IOA storage I/O acceleration, onboard streaming telemetry export

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Rack form factor: 2 RU (8.8 cm height), standard 19-inch EIA horizontal rack
• 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 (5 fans pre-installed, no PSUs/modules): ~20 kg (44 lbs)
• Fully loaded maximum weight (2×AC PSUs + 2 expansion modules): ~23 kg (50 lbs)
• Operating temperature range: 0°C ~ 40°C (32°F ~ 104°F); certified altitude up to 3000m
• Storage temperature: -40°C ~ 70°C
• Relative humidity: 8%–80% non-condensing operating
• 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

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

5. Full NX-OS Feature Set (XL License Enables Extended Scale Limits)

Layer 2 Ethernet & Converged FCoE Storage Fabric

• Single default VDC architecture (Nexus 5000 does not support multiple independent VDC partitions)
• 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 hardware feature to eliminate packet loss for lossless storage traffic
• POAP Power On Auto Provisioning zero-touch automatic switch provisioning for mass rack rollouts
• Extended FEX support (24 FEX units) unlocked by factory XL license

Multilayer Routing & Cross-Data Center Interconnect (L3 license required)

• Dynamic IPv4/IPv6 routing protocols: OSPF, EIGRP, BGP
• 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, 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 for N5K-C5020P-BF-XL

1. Medium virtualized multi-pod data center ToR aggregation core requiring large MAC/FEX scale: XL license supports double MAC table and double FEX count for high-density leaf fabric deployments
2. Multi-building enterprise campus edge converged LAN/SAN switch with extensive multi-tenant segmentation: Extended MAC/ACL capacity for large campus VLAN pools
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 identical switch for full site-wide HA fault tolerance
4. Medium MPLS service provider multi-tenant metro PoP edge gateway: XL expanded route/MAC table handles large multi-customer tenant fabric tables, unused dual expansion slots reserved for future port count expansion or M-series L4-L7 service module upgrades
5. Legacy Nexus 5000 fabric migration upgrade: Pre-loaded XL license removes need for separate scale license purchase, backward compatible with existing 10G SFP transceivers while unlocking 40G/100G high-density port expansion, 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 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-XL Factory SKU

Separately Mandatory Components (Not Included in This Chassis SKU)

• One / two N5K-PAC-550W / N5K-PAC-1200W 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