Cisco N2K-C2348UPQ Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• Core unique advantage:Unified Port (UP)architecture to consolidate LAN server, FCoE storage and native Fibre Channel SAN on one single FEX chassis, eliminating separate LAN/SAN access switches.
• Key hardware highlights: Large 32 MB shared dynamic packet buffer for bursty OLTP, distributed storage and big-data workloads, BiDi 40G transceiver support for existing fiber reuse, fixed mild 2:1 oversubscription ratio, 1+1 redundant hot-swappable AC power supplies and 2+1 redundant hot-swappable fan trays for carrier-grade non-stop operation, dual airflow options (port-side intake / port-side exhaust).

2. Part Number Suffix Breakdown & Model Differentiation

Full PN Breakdown

1. N2K: Nexus 2000/2300 Series Fabric Extender product family
2. C2348UPQ: 1RU all-SFP+ unified-port FEX chassis model
   • 48 × SFP+ unified host ports (1/10GE / FCoE / Native Fibre Channel)
   • UP = Unified Port: Multi-function SFP+ ports supporting Ethernet, FCoE and native Fibre Channel
   • Q = Six integrated 40G QSFP+ fabric uplink ports (2 yellow dedicated uplinks + 4 white flexible uplinks)
3. No fixed airflow preset: Power supply and fan trays are ordered separately to select port-side exhaust (forward airflow) or port-side intake (reverse airflow) cooling direction.

Key Hardware Comparison vs N2K-C2348TQ (Copper 10GBASE-T Model)

Factory Bare Chassis Included Hardware

1. 1RU standard 19-inch EIA horizontal shallow-depth rack-mount passive chassis
2. Rear panel fixed port bank:
   • 48 × auto-configurable SFP+ unified host ports (HIF ports) for servers, all-flash storage, FC SAN arrays; switchable between 1G/10G Ethernet, FCoE or native Fibre Channel after parent switch configuration and FEX reload
   • 6 × 40G QSFP+ fabric uplink ports: 2 yellow dedicated uplinks, 4 white flexible uplinks; each QSFP+ supports breakout splitter cables to 4×10G SFP+ channels, native BiDi 40G optic compatible
3. Front panel redundant FRU slots: Dual AC power supply bays, three hot-swappable fan tray slots (2+1 N+1 cooling redundancy)
4. Integrated out-of-band management suite: HDMI hybrid RS232 serial console, dual 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band management Ethernet, USB Type-A diagnostic flash port
5. Full LED status array: Global system health, per-PSU fault, per-fan fault, per-port link/activity, UID rack locator beacon for maintenance identification
6. Standard 19-inch rack mounting rails, front cable management brackets, hardware installation guide and global safety compliance documentation

Items Not Included (Must Be Ordered Separately)

• Hot-swappable AC power supplies (single PSU for basic operation, dual PSUs mandatory for 1+1 N+1 power redundancy; airflow direction must match fan trays)
• Three hot-swappable fan trays (2+1 redundant cooling; mismatched airflow triggers thermal protection shutdown)
• SFP+ transceivers for 48 unified host ports: 1G/10G Ethernet SR/LR/ER, Twinax/AOC DAC, 2/4/8/16G Fibre Channel SFPs
• 40G QSFP+ transceivers, BiDi optics, active AOC, passive Twinax DAC and 40G-to-4×10G breakout splitter cables for six fabric uplink ports
• Optional accessories: Lockable front door, air filter panel, airflow optimization sleeve, serial console rollover cable

Supported Parent Switch Platforms

• Full feature support (Ethernet + FCoE + Native Fibre Channel): Nexus 5500 / 5600 / 6000 Series (NX-OS 7.3(0)N1(1) minimum for native FC)
• Ethernet & FCoE only (no native Fibre Channel): Nexus 7000 / 7700 Series
• Ethernet-only (FCoE & Fibre Channel unsupported): Nexus 9000 Series

3. Hardware Port & Slot Layout

Rear Panel Fixed Ports

1. 48 × SFP+ Unified Host Ports (HIF)
   Multi-purpose SFP+ unified ports compliant with IEEE 802.3ae 10G Ethernet and IEEE DCB lossless standards (PFC, ETS). Port mode is defined on the parent switch:

• Ethernet mode: Auto-sensing 1G / 10G for virtualization servers, blade enclosures
• FCoE mode: Lossless Fibre Channel over Ethernet for unified storage access
• Native Fibre Channel mode: 2/4/8/16G FC (max 24 ports run 16G FC simultaneously) for direct SAN array connectivity
  All Layer 2, SAN zoning, security and QoS policies are enforced centrally on the parent switch, not the FEX itself.

1. 6 × 40G QSFP+ Fabric Uplink Ports (2 Yellow / 4 White Labeled)
   Wire-speed 40G Ethernet/FCoE uplinks for high-capacity leaf-spine fabric connectivity to upstream aggregation/spine parent switches. Each QSFP+ port breaks out to four independent 10G channels via dedicated splitter cables, expanding total uplink 10G capacity to 24 ports. Native BiDi transceiver support reuses existing single-fiber rack cabling to cut infrastructure cost. All six uplinks can be bundled into LACP port-channels for load balancing and full link failure redundancy.

Front Panel Redundant FRU Slots

1. Two independent hot-swappable AC power supply bays (1+1 redundant deployment for zero production downtime during PSU replacement)
2. Three independent hot-swappable fan tray slots (2+1 N+1 cooling architecture eliminates single cooling failure points)

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: 6×40G full-duplex uplinks, total 240 Gbps aggregate upstream bandwidth
3. Fixed oversubscription ratio: 2:1 (480G host bandwidth / 240G uplink bandwidth)
4. Full-duplex switching capacity: 480 Gbps; wire-speed forwarding throughput: 2160 Mpps (64-byte minimum frame size)
5. Dynamic shared packet buffer: 32 MB user-configurable deep shared buffer, optimized for bursty virtualization, OLTP database, big-data and lossless FC/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 8 physical fabric uplink ports per LACP port-channel / vPC trunk
8. Zero-touch provisioning: Automatic firmware synchronization, configuration download and bulk firmware upgrades triggered via 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 transport over fiber host ports
   • Native Fibre Channel buffer-to-buffer credit support for SAN storage connectivity
   • vPC dual-homing, PVLAN private VLAN, MSTP multi-instance spanning tree, four-level hardware QoS traffic classification per port
   • VNTag virtual machine-aware traffic tagging for multi-tenant virtualized environments
   • Jumbo frame support up to 9216-byte MTU for storage and big-data workloads
   • Expanded buffer utilization and granular drop debug counters for storage burst troubleshooting

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 × 356.9 mm (1.72 × 17.3 × 14.05 inches)
• Bare chassis weight (no PSUs/fans/transceivers): ~5.7 kg (12.6 lbs)
• Fully loaded maximum weight (dual PSUs + three fans + full transceivers): ~7.3 kg (16.1 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 compliance, RoHS 6 validated

AC Power Supply FRU Specifications (Sold Separately)

• Input: Universal 90–264V AC, 47–63Hz
• Typical full-load power consumption: 125W with all 48 host ports active; maximum 200W peak power draw
• Heat dissipation: 426 BTU/h typical, 682 BTU/h maximum
• Hot-swappable OIR replacement, supports 1+1 redundant power deployment

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

Layer 2 Ethernet & Converged FC/FCoE Unified 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 (max 4094 VLANs)
• MSTP multi-instance spanning tree, vPC dual-active peer-link redundancy for server high availability
• Hardware slow drain detection and buffer credit isolation to eliminate FCoE/FC packet loss over fiber host ports
• NPV/NPIV FCoE edge virtualization + native Fibre Channel FEX support for end-to-end SAN consolidation
• POAP zero-touch automatic provisioning for mass rack FEX deployment
• Port security, static MAC locking to restrict unauthorized server/storage device attachment
• Dynamic unified port mode conversion (Ethernet ↔ FCoE ↔ Fibre Channel) via parent switch CLI (FEX reload required after port type change)

QoS & Traffic Prioritization

• Four hardware priority queues per port (all SFP+ unified host ports and 40G QSFP+ uplinks)
• 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, virtual server farms and big-data compute clusters
• DCBX auto-negotiation for lossless FCoE LAN/SAN traffic over fiber DAC/AOC cabling
• Configurable per-port queue limits and shared buffer partitioning to prevent buffer starvation for latency-sensitive FC/FCoE storage workloads

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, detailed buffer utilization statistics
• Expanded SAN-specific debug counters for Fibre Channel credit loss, pause frames and storage traffic bursts
• Fault alert notifications via email, syslog and SNMP v1/v2c/v3
• GOLD Generic Online Diagnostics for continuous FEX hardware health validation without production traffic interruption
• Unified bulk firmware upgrade: Single CLI command on parent switch upgrades all attached FEX devices simultaneously

6. Typical Deployment Scenarios for N2K-C2348UPQ Bare Chassis

1. Enterprise fully converged LAN/SAN rack access: 48 unified SFP+ ports consolidate 10G virtualization servers, FCoE all-flash storage and native 16G Fibre Channel disk arrays on one compact 1RU FEX, eliminating separate LAN and SAN top-of-rack switches and reducing rack space & power consumption.
2. Financial database & big-data storage rack: Large 32 MB shared buffer absorbs massive storage traffic bursts; long-reach LR/ER SFP+ transceivers support cross-rack SAN replication without dedicated FC extension hardware.
3. Blade server enclosure rack aggregation: All-fiber unified port design matches blade server 10G fiber mezzanine adapters, supporting both VM host connectivity and direct SAN storage attachment from the same chassis.
4. Data center fiber infrastructure migration: Native BiDi 40G uplink optics reuse existing single-strand fiber cabling, cutting new fiber deployment cost during 1G-to-10G/40G fabric upgrades.
5. Mid-market multi-tenant storage PoP: Isolate tenant LAN and SAN traffic via separate VLAN/VSAN zoning controlled centrally on the upstream parent switch; six flexible 40G uplinks support multi-link port-channels for high-bandwidth tenant separation.

7. Standard Package Contents of N2K-C2348UPQ Bare Chassis SKU

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

• One or two hot-swappable AC power supplies (dual PSUs recommended for N+1 power redundancy, airflow matched to fan trays)
• Three matching airflow hot-swappable fan trays (three fans required for 2+1 cooling redundancy; airflow must align with power supplies to avoid thermal protection faults)
• SFP+ Ethernet/Fibre Channel transceivers, Twinax/AOC DAC cables for all 48 unified host SFP+ ports
• 40G QSFP+ transceivers, BiDi optics and 4×10G breakout splitter cables for six fabric uplink QSFP+ ports
• Optional feature software licenses: All fabric, routing and SAN convergence features are licensed on the upstream parent Nexus switch; no separate FEX licenses required
• HDMI-format serial console rollover cable, mini USB console cable, fiber patch cords, rack cable management accessories, lockable front door, air filter panel

Short Commercial Catalog Summary for Quotation