Cisco N5K-C5696Q Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• Modular port flexibility: Mix 40G QSFP, breakout 10G, unified FC/Ethernet, and 100G modules in any slot combination
• Dual airflow support: Port-side intake or port-side exhaust fan/power modules to adapt to any cold/hot aisle rack layout
• High redundancy architecture: N+1 redundant power supplies and fan trays for carrier-grade uptime

2. Part Number Suffix Breakdown

1. N5K: Nexus 5600 unified FCoE data center switch product family
2. C5696Q: 4RU modular base chassis
   • 8 LEM expansion slots, maximum 96×40G QSFP ports with full N5696-M12Q modules installed
   • Q = QSFP+ native 40G high-speed uplink architecture, supports breakout to four 10G SFP+ per port
3. No airflow suffix: Power supply and fan trays are ordered separately to define airflow direction (port-in or port-exhaust)

Factory Empty Base Chassis Included Hardware

1. 4RU standard 19-inch EIA horizontal rack-mount passive midplane chassis
2. Eight independent hot-swappable LEM expansion module slots on front panel
3. Rear panel infrastructure: Six power supply bays, four fan tray slots, complete out-of-band management suite
4. Management interfaces: 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)

1. Hot-swappable AC power supplies (minimum 5 required for N+1 redundancy, up to 6 total slots)
2. Four hot-swappable fan trays (N+1 cooling redundancy, airflow must match power supplies)
3. LEM expansion modules (select mix as needed):
   • N5696-M12Q: 12×40G QSFP+ FCoE/Ethernet module (breakout to 4×10G each)
   • N5696-M20UP: 20×unified SFP+ ports (CLI switch between 1/10G Ethernet/FCoE or 2/4/8G native Fibre Channel)
   • N5696-M4C: 4×100G QSFP28 uplink module
4. Transceivers & cables: QSFP+/SFP+/QSFP28 optical transceivers, Twinax DAC, 40G-to-4×10G breakout splitter cables
5. Software feature licenses: C1-N5696 Cisco ONE full feature bundle, XL extended scale, FCoE Enabler, Layer 3 Routing, MPLS, DMM storage migration, IOA acceleration
6. Optional accessories: Lockable front door, extended cable management kit, air filter panel, serial console rollover cable

3. Hardware Port & Slot Layout

Front Panel: Eight Hot-Swappable LEM Expansion Slots

1. N5696-M12Q (12×40G QSFP+): Wire-speed 40G Ethernet/FCoE; each QSFP+ port breaks out to four independent 10G SFP+ channels, expanding total 10G capacity to 384 ports with eight modules installedCisco. All ports comply with IEEE DCB lossless standards (802.1Qbb PFC, 802.1Qaz ETS) for FCoE transport.
2. N5696-M20UP (20×Unified SFP+): Each port software-selectable via CLI without hardware swap:
   • Ethernet/FCoE Mode: 1G/10G SFP/SFP+ for leaf interconnections
   • Native Fibre Channel Mode: 2/4/8G Fibre Channel for direct disk array/tape library SAN attachment
3. N5696-M4C (4×100G QSFP28): High-capacity 100G uplinks for spine-core interconnection

Rear Panel Infrastructure

1. Six hot-swappable AC power supply bays (N+1 redundant design, 5 active + 1 spare)
2. Four hot-swappable fan tray slots (2+1 cooling redundancy, mixed airflow directions trigger thermal protection shutdown)
3. Dedicated management port block: Dual 1G out-of-band Ethernet, serial console, USB flash port
4. Global chassis health LED, power/fan fault indicators, UID locator beacon for rack asset identification

4. Hardware Performance Specifications

1. Non-blocking full-duplex switching fabric aggregate bandwidth: 7680 Gbps (7.68 Tbps)
2. Wire-speed Layer 2/Layer 3 forwarding throughput: 5713 Mpps (64-byte minimum frame size)
3. Cut-through switching latency: Consistent ~1 microsecond across all 10G/40G/100G ports
4. Dynamic shared packet buffer: 25 MB per 12-port group, optimized for mixed LAN/SAN burst traffic
5. Address table scaling: Base 64,000 MAC entries; XL license unlocks 256,000 combined MAC/ARP host entries, expanded multicast tablesCisco
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)Cisco
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
   • Buffer-to-buffer credits for unified Fibre Channel ports supporting medium-distance SAN extension

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Form Factor: 4 RU (17.7 cm height), standard 19-inch EIA horizontal rack mount
• External dimensions (H × W × D): 177 mm × 439 mm × 762 mm
• Empty chassis weight (no PSUs/fans/modules/transceivers): ~18.5 kg (40.8 lbs)
• Fully loaded maximum weight (6 PSUs + 4 fans + 8 full LEM modules + transceivers): ~32 kg (70.5 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, multiple wattage variants matched to selected airflow direction; supports universal 100–240V AC input
• Fan trays: Four independent hot-swappable fan modules, N+1 cooling redundancy; airflow direction must align with power supplies to avoid thermal faults

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 (max 4000 VLANs)
• 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 on N5696-M20UP modules to toggle ports between Ethernet/FCoE and 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 unified port modules for IP-attached storage consolidation

Advanced QoS & Traffic Prioritization

• Four hardware priority queues per port (10G SFP+, 40G QSFP+, 100G QSFP28) 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 fiber 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/QSFP 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-C5696Q Empty Chassis

1. Large leaf-spine data center spine aggregation core: Mix N5696-M12Q 40G modules for leaf interconnection and N5696-M4C 100G modules for core uplinks; massive 7.68 Tbps fabric bandwidth supports thousands of virtualized server workloads
2. Enterprise financial/mainframe zSystems central unified storage core: Deploy N5696-M20UP unified port modules for mixed direct Fibre Channel tape/disk arrays and FCoE server links; N+1 redundant power/fan design eliminates single point of failure for mission-critical SAN
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 disaster recovery replication between primary and DR data centers
4. Medium-to-large MPLS service provider multi-tenant metro PoP core switch: Full carrier-grade MPLS/EVPN/VXLAN feature suite supported via separate C1 license; VLAN/VSAN multi-tenant isolation separates hundreds of independent enterprise customer LAN/SAN fabrics on a single chassis
5. Legacy Nexus 5500 fabric high-capacity upgrade: Backward compatible with existing 10G SFP transceivers while delivering 5x higher fabric bandwidth, hardware VXLAN offload and ultra-low 1μs cut-through latency for large virtualization environments
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 workloads; unified port modules support direct native FC attachment for high-capacity remote tape arrays

7. Standard Package Contents of N5K-C5696Q Empty Base Chassis SKU

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

• Minimum five hot-swappable AC power supplies (N+1 redundancy, airflow matched to fan trays)
• Four matching airflow hot-swappable fan trays (airflow must align with power supplies to avoid thermal faults)
• Optional N5696-M series LEM expansion modules for eight front expansion slots
• QSFP+/SFP+/QSFP28 optical transceivers and Twinax DAC breakout cables for all module interfaces
• Optional feature software licenses: C1-N5696 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