Cisco N5K-C5548UP-FA Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• UP = Unified Port: Every fixed SFP+ port can be dynamically configured as 1/10G Ethernet/FCoE or native 1/2/4/8G Fibre Channel without dedicated FC expansion cards
• FA = Front-to-Back airflow: Cold air intake front, hot exhaust rear, standard cold/hot aisle data center rack design

2. Suffix Breakdown & Official Chassis Definition

• N5K: Nexus 5500 unified FCoE data center switch family
• C5548UP: Base 32-port 1RU Nexus 5548UP unified port model; UP = Unified Port (port mode software-switchable Ethernet/Fibre Channel)
• FA: Front-to-Back airflow (cold inlet front, hot exhaust rear)

Factory Pre-Integrated Hardware Included in N5K-C5548UP-FA

1. 1RU standard 19-inch rack-mount passive midplane chassis
2. Two N5548UP-FAN front-to-back hot-swappable fan trays (N+1 cooling redundancy, factory pre-installed)
3. Two N55-PAC-750W 750W AC hot-swappable power supplies (factory pre-populated, N+1 power redundancy out of box)
4. 32 fixed unified SFP+ 1/10G FCoE/Ethernet / Fibre Channel ports
5. One rear hot-swappable expansion module slot for extra uplink/storage ports
6. Full management interface set: RJ45 serial console, dual 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band management Ethernet, USB diagnostic flash port
7. Standard rack mounting rails, front cable management brackets, hardware installation & safety documentation

Key Difference vs N5K-C5548P-FA

• N5K-C5548P-FA: Fixed SFP+ ports only support Ethernet/FCoE, cannot switch to native Fibre Channel
• N5K-C5548UP-FA: All 32 front ports are unified ports, software-selectable as Ethernet/FCoE or native FC without extra FC expansion modules

Items Not Included (Must Be Ordered Separately)

• SFP+/SFP optical transceivers, Twinax copper DAC cables for all fixed and expansion ports
• N55-M series expansion modules (unified port hybrid, pure Ethernet or pure Fibre Channel uplink cards)
• N55-DL2 Layer 3 routing daughter card (adds 160 Gbps dedicated L3 forwarding capacity)
• Software feature licenses: C1-N5548 XL extended scale, FCoE Enabler, L3 Routing, MPLS, DMM Data Migration, IOA Acceleration
• Optional accessories: Lockable front door, extended cable management kit, air filter panel

3. Core Hardware Port & Slot Layout

Front Panel Fixed Ports (32 × Unified SFP+)

1. Mode 1: Dual-speed 1G/10G SFP/SFP+ Ethernet + lossless FCoE
2. Mode 2: Native 1/2/4/8G Fibre Channel storage port
   Supports full IEEE DCB stack (802.1Qbb PFC priority flow control, 802.1Qaz ETS enhanced transmission selection) for unified storage-Ethernet traffic convergence.

Rear Single Expansion Module Slot (1 OIR hot-swappable slot)

1. N55-M1604: 6×10G SFP+ FCoE/Ethernet uplink module
2. N55-M1404: 4×8G FC + 4×10G FCoE/Ethernet hybrid storage module
3. N55-M8FC: 8×4G/2G/1G native Fibre Channel module
4. N55-M6FC: 6×8G/4G/2G/1G high-speed native Fibre Channel module
5. N55-M16UP: 16×unified SFP+ expansion module (extra unified FC/Ethernet ports)

Rear Power & Fan Subsystems (Pre-populated on FA SKU)

• Dual factory pre-installed N55-PAC-750W AC power supply bays (N+1 redundant power, OIR hot-swap replacement supported)
• Two pre-installed hot-swappable multi-fan trays (front-to-back airflow, N+1 cooling 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. USB Type-A flash 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: 960 Gbps full-duplex
2. Wire-speed Layer 2 forwarding throughput: 720 Mpps at maximum 10G port speed
3. Cut-through switching latency: ~3 microseconds for standard data center packets
4. Layer 2 MAC address table base capacity: 32,000 entries (expandable via XL 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 bundle
7. Maximum supported Nexus 2000 FEX fabric extenders: 24 FEX leaf units (XL license required)
8. Native ASIC hardware offload suite:
   • Complete lossless FCoE protocol 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, onboard streaming telemetry export

Layer 3 Daughter Card (Separate Order Item)

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Rack form factor: 1 RU (4.37 cm height), standard 19-inch EIA horizontal rack
• External dimensions (H × W × D): 4.37 cm × 43.9 cm × 76.2 cm; extended depth 88.6cm with cable management kit installed
• Pre-populated chassis weight (2×AC PSUs + two fan trays, no expansion modules/transceivers): ~13.5 kg (30 lbs)
• Fully loaded maximum weight (dual AC PSUs + two fan trays + one expansion module): ~16.2 kg (36 lbs)
• Operating ambient temperature range: 0°C ~ 40°C (32°F ~ 104°F); certified altitude up to 3000m
• Storage temperature range: -40°C ~ 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 6, FIPS 140-2 Level 1 validated

N55-PAC-750W AC Power Supply Spec (Factory Pre-Installed)

5. Full NX-OS Feature Set Supported

Layer 2 Ethernet & Converged FCoE Storage Fabric

• Single default VDC architecture (Nexus 5500 series does not support multiple independent VDC partitions)
• 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 provisioning for mass rack rollouts
• Native Nexus 2000 FEX fabric extender support for high-density server leaf access aggregation
• Unified port mode switching: CLI command to toggle each SFP+ between Ethernet/FCoE and native Fibre Channel without hardware replacement

Multilayer Routing & Cross-Data Center Interconnect (L3 license + N55-DL2 daughter card mandatory)

• Dynamic IPv4/IPv6 routing protocols: OSPF, EIGRP, BGP
• VRF virtual routing and forwarding multi-tenant Layer 3 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+ unified 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 1 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-C5548UP-FA Unified Port SKU

1. Medium virtualized multi-pod data center ToR top-of-rack aggregation core requiring mixed Ethernet and native Fibre Channel access: 32 unified ports flexibly split for server 10G leaf links and direct FC storage attachment without dedicated FC expansion cards
2. Medium financial/mainframe zSystems converged storage core: Native FCoE + direct native FC port mode eliminates extra FC module costs for tape library and disk array connections; dual AC power + dual fan factory redundancy removes single power/cooling failure points
3. Medium enterprise campus edge converged LAN/SAN switch: Front-to-back airflow fits standard cold aisle racks, built-in FCIP hardware offload provides asynchronous disaster recovery replication between primary and DR data centers
4. Small-to-medium MPLS service provider multi-tenant metro PoP edge gateway: VLAN/VSAN multi-tenant logical isolation separates independent enterprise customer LAN/SAN fabrics, unified ports support both Ethernet customer access and FC storage interconnection
5. Legacy Nexus 5000 fabric migration upgrade: Backward compatible with existing 10G SFP transceivers while unlocking flexible unified port FC/Ethernet switching, larger MAC 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 utilizing multi-port FCIP PortChannel trunks to primary production FCoE SAN fabrics for asynchronous off-site tape archive replication workloads, unified front ports can switch to native FC for direct tape array attachment

7. Standard Package Contents of N5K-C5548UP-FA Factory Pre-Populated SKU

Separately Mandatory Components (Not Included in This Factory Bundle)

• Optional N55-M series expansion line/service modules for single rear expansion slot
• SFP+/QSFP+ optical fiber transceivers for all base unified Ethernet/FCoE/FC port interfaces (backward compatible with legacy 1G SFP transceivers)
• Optional N55-DL2 Layer 3 routing daughter card (to enable hardware Layer 3 forwarding capability)
• Optional feature software licenses: C1-N5548 XL Scale, 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