Cisco N5K-C5672UP-16G Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• UP-16G Core Differentiator: 24 unified ports (marked orange on chassis) support 2/4/8/16G native Fibre Channel, equipped with up to 128 buffer-to-buffer credits per FC port for long-distance SAN links; baseline N5K-C5672UP only has 16 unified ports limited to max 8G FC with minimal BB creditsCisco.
• Dual airflow flexibility: Supports port-side intake (red handle) or fan-side intake (blue handle) power/fan modules to match any cold/hot aisle rack layout.

2. Part Number Suffix Breakdown

1. N5K: Nexus 5600 unified FCoE data center switch product family
2. C5672UP-16G: Base 1RU chassis model
   • 72 total wire-speed 10G ports maximum (48 fixed 10G SFP+ + breakout from 6×40G QSFP+)
   • UP: Unified Port;16G: 24 unified ports support up to 16G Fibre Channel with extended buffer credits for long SAN extension
3. No airflow suffix: Power supply and fan trays are sold separately to define airflow direction (port-in or fan-in)

Factory Bare Chassis Included Hardware

1. 1RU standard 19-inch EIA horizontal rack-mount passive midplane chassis
2. Front fixed port bank: 48 × 1/10G SFP+ interfaces
   • First 24 ports: Standard 1G/10G Ethernet/FCoE only, no native Fibre Channel capability
   • Last 24 orange-marked unified ports (UP-16G): Software configurable for Ethernet/FCoE or 2/4/8/16G native Fibre Channel
3. Six rear native 40G QSFP+ uplink ports; each QSFP+ port breaks out to four independent 10G SFP+ channels via splitter cables
4. Full out-of-band management suite: RJ45 RS232 serial console, dual 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band management Ethernet, USB Type-A diagnostic flash port
5. Standard 19-inch rack mounting rails, front cable management brackets, hardware installation & global safety compliance documentation

Items Not Included (Must Be Ordered Separately)

• Hot-swappable redundant AC power supplies (1+1 redundant pair required, airflow direction matched to fans)
• Three hot-swappable fan modules (2+1 cooling redundancy, airflow must align with power supplies)
• SFP+/SFP optical transceivers, Twinax copper DAC cables for all 48 fixed 10G ports
• QSFP+ 40G transceivers, 40G-to-4×10G breakout splitter cables for uplink ports
• Software feature licenses: C1-N5672 Cisco ONE full feature bundle, XL extended scale, FCoE Enabler, Layer 3 Routing, MPLS, DMM storage migration, IOA acceleration
• Optional accessories: Lockable front door, extended cable management kit, air filter panel, serial console rollover cable

Key Hardware Distinction vs Standard N5K-C5672UP

3. Hardware Port Layout

Front Panel Fixed 48 × SFP+ Ports

1. First 24 SFP+ ports: Standard dual-speed 1G/10G Ethernet/FCoE only, cannot be switched to native Fibre Channel.
2. Last 24 orange-highlighted unified SFP+ ports (16G-capable): Two CLI-selectable operating modes without hardware replacement
   • Ethernet/FCoE Mode: 1G/10G SFP/SFP+ for server leaf connections, leaf-spine FCoE inter-switch links
   • Native Fibre Channel Mode: 2/4/8/16G Fibre Channel for direct all-flash arrays, disk storage, and long-distance tape library SAN interconnections
     All 48 fixed ports comply with IEEE DCB lossless standards (802.1Qbb PFC, 802.1Qaz ETS) to guarantee lossless FCoE transport over copper and fiber transceivers.

Rear Six 40G QSFP+ Uplink Ports

Management Interfaces

• RJ45 serial console port for local CLI configuration and troubleshooting
• Dual independent 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band management Ethernet ports for remote access during data plane outages
• USB Type-A flash port for offline NX-OS firmware upgrades, running configuration backup and offline diagnostics

Front Panel LED Status Array

4. Hardware Performance Specifications

1. Non-blocking full-duplex switching fabric aggregate bandwidth: 1440 Gbps (1.44 Tbps)
2. Wire-speed Layer 2/Layer 3 forwarding throughput: 1071 Mpps (64-byte minimum frame size)
3. Cut-through switching latency: Consistent ~1 microsecond for all 10G/40G port traffic
4. Shared dynamic packet buffer: 25 MB allocated per 12-port port group, optimized for mixed LAN/SAN burst traffic
5. Address table scaling: Base 64,000 MAC entries; XL license unlocks combined 256,000 MAC/ARP host entries, expanded multicast tables
6. Port-channel scaling limit: 1024 LACP logical trunk bundles, maximum 16 physical ports per vPC/ISL trunk
7. Maximum supported Nexus 2000 FEX fabric extenders: 48 FEX leaf units (XL scale license required)
8. ASIC hardware offload feature suite:
   • Full lossless FCoE SAN stack: PFC priority flow control, ETS bandwidth scheduling, VNTag virtualization, FC-NVMe low-latency storage tunneling
   • Line-rate VXLAN/NVGRE hardware offload for multi-tenant cloud VM bridging & routing
   • OTV cross-data-center overlay encapsulation, LISP workload mobility for multi-pod distributed fabrics
   • Hardware-accelerated FCIP tunnel compression, write acceleration and tape pipelining for cross-site disaster recovery SAN replication
   • DMM non-disruptive storage data migration, IOA storage I/O optimization, real-time streaming LAN/SAN telemetry export
   • Up to 128 buffer-to-buffer credits per unified FC port, supporting long-distance SAN extension up to 16 km at full 16G Fibre Channel frame size (2122 bytes)Cisco

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Form Factor: 1 RU (4.4 cm height), standard 19-inch EIA horizontal rack mount
• External dimensions (H × W × D): 4.4 cm × 43.9 cm × 76.2 cm
• Bare chassis weight (no power supplies/fans/transceivers): ~9.5 kg (21 lbs)
• Fully loaded maximum weight (dual PSUs + three fans + full transceivers): ~14.5 kg (32 lbs)
• Operating temperature range: 0°C ~ 40°C (32°F ~ 104°F); certified altitude up to 3,000 meters
• Storage temperature range: -40°C ~ 70°C (-40°F ~ 158°F)
• Operating relative humidity: 8%–80% non-condensing; storage humidity 5%–95% non-condensing
• Compliance Certifications: FCC Class A, UL 60950-1, CE, VCCI Class A, NEBS Level 3, GR63 seismic Zone 4, RoHS 6 compliant, FIPS 140-2 Level 1 validated

Redundant Power & Fan Modules (Sold Separately)

• AC power supply: Hot-swappable, 1+1 N+1 redundant architecture; multiple wattage options matched to selected airflow direction
• Fan trays: Three independent hot-swappable fan modules, 2+1 cooling redundancy; mismatched airflow directions between power and fan modules trigger thermal protection shutdown

5. Full NX-OS Feature Set Supported

Layer 2 Ethernet & Converged FCoE Storage Fabric

• Single default VDC architecture (Nexus 5600 series does not support multiple independent VDC partitions)
• 802.1Q VLAN tagging, PVLAN private VLAN anti-spoofing isolation
• MSTP multi-instance spanning tree for Layer 2 loop prevention, vPC dual-active peer-link redundancy for storage/Ethernet uplinks
• Hardware slow drain detection and buffer credit isolation to eliminate FCoE storage packet loss
• NPV/NPIV FCoE edge virtualization to reduce upstream MDS SAN director control-plane overhead
• POAP zero-touch automatic switch provisioning for mass rack rollouts
• Native Nexus 2000 FEX fabric extender support for high-density server leaf aggregation
• Dynamic unified port mode switching via CLI to toggle the 24 orange UP ports between Ethernet/FCoE and 2/4/8/16G native Fibre Channel without hardware replacement

Multilayer Routing & Cross-Data Center Interconnect (Layer 3 License Required)

• Full IPv4/IPv6 dynamic routing protocols: OSPF, EIGRP, BGP, static routing, ECMP load balancing
• VRF virtual routing and forwarding for multi-tenant Layer 3 traffic isolation
• Licensed IVR Inter-VSAN Routing for secure cross-storage-fabric data forwarding
• OTV Overlay Transport Virtualization for Layer 2 workload mobility across geographically separated disaster recovery sites
• LISP Locator/ID Separation Protocol for multi-pod distributed data center interconnection
• Full carrier MPLS stack including LDP, VPLS, VPWS, EVPN-FC dual-stack multi-tenant transport
• Hardware-accelerated FCIP tunnel compression, write acceleration and tape pipelining for long-distance off-site backup replication
• iSCSI multi-protocol gateway functionality via supported transceivers for IP-attached storage consolidation

Advanced QoS & Traffic Prioritization

• Four hardware priority queues per port (10G SFP+ and 40G QSFP+) for tiered classification of storage I/O, VM 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 databases, all-flash NVMe storage, virtual server workloads, tape archives and disaster recovery replication
• Dedicated high-priority low-latency queue for real-time unified communications and enterprise database workloads
• DCBX media optimization for converged FCoE LAN/SAN traffic over all 10G unified SFP+ interfaces

Enterprise & Service Provider Security Suite

• Port security with static MAC locking to block unauthorized server/storage device attachment
• Granular RBAC multi-tier administrative access control, native integration with Cisco ISE identity engine
• SSHv2 encrypted remote management, SNMPv3 secure monitoring, AES encrypted startup configurations, DH-CHAP FCoE inter-fabric authentication
• Port lockdown, VSAN read-only permission controls, complete audit logging for all fabric configuration changes
• FIPS 140-2 Level 1 compliance for government, financial and regulated enterprise deployments
• Cisco TrustSec security group tagging for end-to-end policy segmentation across campus and data center fabrics
• 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 management Ethernet ports for offline device access during fabric-wide outages and analytics export
• External USB flash storage for offline NX-OS firmware upgrades, running configuration backup and offline diagnostics
• CDP automatic neighbor discovery for Nexus/MDS fabric devices
• Real-time streaming telemetry: port throughput, latency, frame error counters, SFP optical transmit power diagnostics
• Fault alert notifications via email, syslog and SNMP traps
• GOLD Generic Online Diagnostics for 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-C5672UP-16G Bare Chassis

1. Medium/Large leaf-spine data center long-distance SAN aggregation core: 24 16G-capable unified ports support direct attachment of 16G all-flash storage arrays and cross-building SAN extension links up to 16 km; six 40G QSFP+ uplinks connect to spine switches for high-capacity fabric scaling
2. Enterprise financial/mainframe zSystems converged unified storage core: Optimized for large tape library environments and remote disaster recovery SAN links; extended buffer credits eliminate frame loss over long fiber SAN connections, no dedicated long-distance FC extension hardware required
3. Multi-building enterprise campus core converged LAN/SAN switch: Modular airflow power/fan options adapt to any cold/hot aisle rack layout; built-in FCIP hardware offload provides asynchronous cross-site backup replication between primary and DR data centers
4. Medium MPLS service provider multi-tenant metro PoP leaf switch: Full carrier-grade MPLS/EVPN/VXLAN feature suite supported via separate C1 license; VLAN/VSAN multi-tenant isolation separates independent enterprise customer LAN/SAN fabrics on a single chassis
5. Legacy Nexus 5500 SAN fabric performance upgrade: Backward compatible with existing 10G SFP transceivers while adding 16G native Fibre Channel, doubled fabric bandwidth, hardware VXLAN offload and ultra-low 1μs cut-through latency
6. Centralized enterprise large-scale remote tape library backup fabric aggregation core: Dedicated SAN aggregation switch utilizing multi-port FCIP port-channels to primary production FCoE fabrics for asynchronous off-site archive replication; 24 unified ports can switch to 16G native FC for direct high-capacity remote tape array attachment

7. Standard Package Contents of N5K-C5672UP-16G Bare Chassis SKU

Separately Mandatory Components (Not Included in This Bare Chassis Bundle)

• Two hot-swappable AC power supplies (airflow direction matched to selected fan trays: port-side intake or fan-side intake)
• Three matching airflow hot-swappable fan trays (airflow must align with power supplies to avoid thermal faults)
• SFP+/SFP optical transceivers and Twinax DAC copper cables for all 48 fixed 10G SFP+ front ports
• QSFP+ 40G transceivers and 4×10G breakout splitter cables for six rear 40G uplink ports
• Optional feature software licenses: C1-N5672 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 Suite
• RS232 serial console rollover cable, mini USB console cable, fiber/copper patch cords, rack cable management accessories, lockable front door, air filter panel

Short Commercial Catalog Summary for Quotation