Cisco N2K-C2248PQ Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• Core design advantages: All SFP+ fiber host ports with native FCoE capability, high-capacity 40G breakout uplinks, split ingress/egress large packet buffers, dual airflow options for flexible hot/cold aisle rack deployment
• Fixed 3:1 oversubscription ratio: 480 Gbps aggregate host bandwidth vs 160 Gbps total fabric uplink bandwidth
• Carrier-grade redundancy: Hot-swappable dual AC power supplies and dual hot-swappable fan trays to eliminate single power/cooling failure points

2. Part Number Suffix Breakdown & Model Differentiation

Full PN Breakdown

1. N2K: Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extender product family
2. C2248PQ: 1RU high-density all-fiber FEX chassis
   • 48 × auto-sensing 1/10G SFP+ host ports (supports Ethernet and lossless FCoE)
   • P: Dense SFP+ host port bank;Q: Four native 40G QSFP+ fabric uplink ports (breakout to 4×10G per port)
3. No fixed airflow preset: Power supply and fan trays are ordered separately with matching port-side intake / port-side exhaust airflow directions

Key Hardware Comparison vs N2K-C2232PP-10GE

Factory Bare Chassis Included Hardware

1. 1RU standard 19-inch EIA horizontal rack-mount passive chassis
2. Rear panel fixed port bank:
   • 48 × auto-negotiating 1/10G SFP+ host ports for server, virtualization host and all-flash storage connections
   • 4 × yellow-labeled 40G QSFP+ fabric uplink ports dedicated to parent switch interconnection
3. Front panel redundant FRU slots: Dual AC power supply bays, dual hot-swappable fan tray slots
4. Complete out-of-band management interfaces: RJ45 RS232 serial console, dual 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band management Ethernet, USB Type-A diagnostic flash port
5. Integrated status LED indicators: Global system health, power supply fault, fan fault, per-port link/activity, UID rack locator beacon
6. 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 AC power supplies (minimum two for N+1 redundancy; airflow must match fan trays)
• Dual hot-swappable fan trays (airflow direction consistent with power supplies to avoid thermal protection shutdown)
• SFP+ transceivers, Twinax copper DAC, active AOC cables for all 48 host SFP+ ports
• QSFP+ 40G transceivers, 40G-to-4×10G breakout splitter cables for four fabric uplink ports
• Optional accessories: Lockable front door, air filter panel, cable management guides, serial console rollover cable

Supported Parent Switch Platforms

3. Hardware Port & Slot Layout

Rear Panel Fixed Ports

1. 48 × 1/10G SFP+ Host Ports
   Auto-sensing 1G/10G fiber interfaces compliant with IEEE 802.3ae 10G Ethernet and IEEE DCB lossless standards (802.1Qbb PFC, 802.1Qaz ETS) to carry lossless FCoE storage traffic over multi-mode/single-mode fiber or short-range Twinax DAC cables. All Layer 2, SAN and security policies are enforced centrally on the parent switch, not the FEX itself. Each SFP+ slot supports standard Ethernet transceivers and Fibre Channel SFP+ transceivers for direct SAN storage attachment.
2. 4 × 40G QSFP+ Fabric Uplink Ports
   Wire-speed 40G Ethernet/FCoE uplinks for high-capacity fabric connectivity to the upstream parent spine/aggregation switch. Each QSFP+ port supports breakout via splitter cables into four independent 10G SFP+ channels, expanding total fabric uplink capacity to 16×10G ports. All four uplinks can be bundled into LACP port-channels for load balancing and full link redundancy.

Front Panel Redundant FRU Slots

1. Two independent hot-swappable AC power supply bays (N+1 redundant deployment supported)
2. Two independent hot-swappable fan tray slots (dual-fan redundancy eliminates single cooling point of failure)

Front Panel LED Status Array

4. Hardware Performance Specifications

1. Total host port capacity: 48×10G wire-speed downlink ports, total 480 Gbps aggregate host bandwidth
2. Fabric uplink bandwidth: 4×40G full-duplex uplinks, total 160 Gbps aggregate upstream bandwidth
3. Fixed oversubscription ratio: 3:1 (480G host bandwidth / 160G uplink bandwidth)
4. Full-duplex switching capacity: 1280 Gbps; wire-speed forwarding throughput: 952 Mpps (64-byte minimum frame size)
5. Split dynamic packet buffer: 32 MB ingress buffer (network-to-host) + 8 MB egress buffer (host-to-network), optimized for bursty virtualization and FCoE storage workloads
6. VLAN support: Up to 4094 standard IEEE 802.1Q VLANs, configured and managed exclusively on the parent switch
7. Port-channel scaling: Supports up to 16 physical host ports per LACP host port-channel / vPC trunk
8. Zero-touch provisioning: Automatic firmware synchronization, configuration download and bulk upgrades triggered from a singleinstall allcommand on the parent switch
9. Hardware offload & lossless features (controlled by parent NX-OS):
   • IEEE DCB standards (PFC Priority Flow Control, ETS Enhanced Transmission Selection) for lossless FCoE storage transport
   • vPC dual-homing, PVLAN private VLAN, MSTP spanning tree, QoS traffic classification
   • VNTag virtual machine-aware traffic tagging for virtualized server environments
   • Buffer-to-buffer credits for medium-distance Fibre Channel SAN extension via SFP+ FC transceivers
   • Jumbo frame support up to 9216-byte MTU for storage and big-data workloads

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Form Factor: 1 RU (43.7 mm height), standard 19-inch horizontal rack mount
• Dimensions (H × W × D): 43.7 mm × 439.4 mm × 449.6 mm (1.72 × 17.3 × 17.7 inches)
• Bare chassis weight (no PSUs/fans/transceivers): ~6.2 kg (13.7 lbs)
• Fully loaded maximum weight (dual PSUs + dual fans + full transceivers): ~8.0 kg (17.6 lbs)Cisco Russ...
• 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: 5%–95% non-condensing
• Compliance Certifications: FCC Class A, UL 60950-1, CE, VCCI Class A, NEBS Level 3, GR63 seismic compliance, RoHS 6 validated

AC Power Supply FRU Specifications (Sold Separately)

• Input: Universal 90–264V AC, 50–63Hz
• Typical full-load power consumption: 230W with all 48 host ports active
• Hot-swappable OIR replacement, supports N+1 redundant power deployment

5. NX-OS Feature Set (Managed Centrally on Parent Switch)

Layer 2 Ethernet & Converged FCoE Fabric

• Single centralized management plane; all FEX ports appear as logical HIF (Host Interface) interfaces on the parent NX-OS switch
• 802.1Q VLAN tagging, PVLAN private VLAN isolation
• MSTP multi-instance spanning tree, vPC dual-active peer-link redundancy for server high availability
• IEEE DCB lossless standards (PFC, ETS) enabling FCoE storage traffic over all SFP+ fiber host ports
• NPV/NPIV FCoE edge virtualization for unified LAN-SAN data center convergence
• POAP zero-touch automatic provisioning for mass rack FEX deployment
• Port security, static MAC locking to restrict unauthorized server/storage device attachment
• Full 1/10G auto-sensing on all SFP+ host ports without transceiver replacement

QoS & Traffic Prioritization

• Four hardware priority queues per port (all SFP+ host and 40G QSFP+ uplink ports)
• Ingress policing, egress bandwidth shaping to throttle low-priority tape backup and replication traffic
• Pre-built QoS templates optimized for OLTP databases, all-flash NVMe storage, HPC big-data clusters and virtual server farms
• DCBX auto-negotiation for lossless FCoE LAN/SAN traffic over fiber and Twinax copper DAC interfaces

Monitoring & Automation Tools

• Cisco DCNM centralized converged fabric monitoring, provisioning and REST API automation
• 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 FEX hardware health validation without production traffic interruption
• Unified bulk firmware upgrade: Single command on parent switch upgrades all attached FEX devices simultaneously

6. Typical Deployment Scenarios for N2K-C2248PQ Bare Chassis

1. Large leaf-spine all-fiber data center leaf rack: 48 SFP+ 10G host ports connect high-density virtualization servers, blade enclosures and all-flash storage arrays; four 40G QSFP+ uplinks deliver high-capacity low-oversubscription connectivity to the spine layer, ideal for high-throughput virtualized workloads
2. Enterprise financial/mainframe unified long-distance SAN-LAN rack: All-fiber design supports LR/ER SFP+ transceivers for cross-building SAN replication, consolidating 10G virtual server links and Fibre Channel storage on a single compact 1RU FEX chassis
3. High-performance computing (HPC) / distributed storage rack aggregation: Large split ingress buffer absorbs massive burst traffic from compute clusters and distributed file systems, avoiding FCoE packet loss under heavy load
4. Legacy Nexus fabric high-density fiber upgrade: Direct replacement for N2K-C2232PP-10GE to boost host port count and uplink bandwidth; backward compatible with existing 10G SFP transceivers and all supported parent switch platforms
5. Medium multi-tenant service provider PoP leaf switch: High-density fiber port design isolates tenant traffic via VLAN/VSAN, with centralized security and QoS policy control on the upstream core parent switch

7. Standard Package Contents of N2K-C2248PQ Bare Chassis SKU

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

• Two hot-swappable AC power supplies (dual PSUs recommended for N+1 power redundancy, airflow matched to fan trays)
• Two matching airflow hot-swappable fan trays (dual fans recommended for cooling redundancy; airflow must align with power supplies to avoid thermal faults)
• SFP+ optical transceivers, Twinax DAC copper cables and FET-10G transceivers for all 48 host SFP+ ports
• QSFP+ 40G transceivers and 4×10G breakout splitter cables for four fabric uplink QSFP+ ports
• Optional feature software licenses: All fabric, routing and storage features are licensed on the upstream parent Nexus switch; no separate FEX licenses required
• 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