Cisco N2K-B22DELL-P Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• Core product differentiation:-P = Bare chassis module without pre-installed FET-10G fabric transceivers(distinguished from N2K-B22DELL-F which ships with 16 factory preloaded FET optics).
• Key design highlights: Optimized unified LAN/FCoE fabric for blade server racks, fixed mild 2:1 oversubscription ratio, power and cooling fully supplied by the Dell M1000e blade chassis (no standalone PSUs/fans required), zero-touch provisioning and single-pane management across rack and blade server access layers.

2. Part Number Suffix Breakdown & Model Differentiation

Full PN Breakdown

1. N2K: Cisco Nexus 2000/B22 Blade Fabric Extender family
2. B22DELL-P: Single-wide blade FEX module for Dell M1000e chassis
   • B22: Blade form factor Fabric Extender series
   • DELL: Customized hardware for Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade enclosure midplane
   • -P: Bare module, no factory pre-installed FET-10G fabric transceivers (customer supplies SFP+ uplink optics separately)
3. Form factor: Single-width hot-swappable I/O blade slot for Dell M1000e chassis; power, fan and airflow are managed by the host blade rack infrastructure, no independent FRUs on the FEX itself.

Hardware Comparison Table

Factory Bare Chassis Included Hardware

1. Single-width hot-swappable blade FEX module compatible with Dell PowerEdge M1000e enclosure I/O slots
2. Internal midplane port bank: 16 × auto-sensing 1/10GBASE-KR host interfaces hardwired to the Dell blade chassis backplane for direct server blade connectivity
3. External rear panel port bank: 8 × SFP+ 10G fabric uplink ports for parent Nexus switch interconnection; supports FET-10G breakout transceivers, 10G SR/LR/ER optics and Twinax/AOC DAC cables
4. Integrated status LED indicators: Global system health, fabric link activity, host port link status, power fault alarm
5. Blade locking latch, hot-swap extraction handle, hardware installation guide and global safety compliance documentation

Items Not Included (Must Be Ordered Separately)

• SFP+ transceivers for 8 fabric uplink ports: FET-10G breakout modules, 10G Ethernet SR/LR/ER optical transceivers, passive Twinax DAC, active AOC cables
• Optional accessories: Serial console rollover cable, out-of-band management Ethernet patch cord
• Power supplies and fan trays: Fully integrated and supplied by the Dell M1000e blade chassis (not sold separately with the FEX module)

Supported Parent Switch Platforms

• Full feature support (Ethernet + Lossless FCoE): Cisco Nexus 5500 Series (minimum NX-OS 6.0(2)N1(1) firmware)
• Partial support (Ethernet only, no FCoE): Nexus 6000 / 7000 / 7700 Series
• Unsupported: Nexus 9000 Series (FCoE and unified fabric functions disabled)

3. Hardware Port & Slot Layout

Internal Midplane Host Interfaces (Hidden Blade Side)

External Rear Fabric Uplink Ports (Rear Blade Panel)

Blade LED Status Array

4. Hardware Performance Specifications

1. Total host port capacity: 16×10G wire-speed downlink ports, total 160 Gbps aggregate host bandwidth
2. Fabric uplink bandwidth: 8×10G full-duplex uplinks, total 80 Gbps aggregate upstream bandwidth
3. Fixed oversubscription ratio: 2:1 (160G host bandwidth / 80G uplink bandwidth)
4. Full-duplex switching capacity: 160 Gbps; wire-speed forwarding throughput: 297 Mpps (64-byte minimum frame size)
5. Shared packet buffer: Optimized unified buffer architecture for blade virtualization and FCoE storage burst 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 fabric 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 Nexus 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 to blade servers
   • vPC, FEX vPC, Enhanced vPC (EvPC) and vPC+ high availability topologies for blade server redundancy
   • 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 blade virtualization environments
   • Jumbo frame support up to 9216-byte MTU for storage and big-data blade workloads
   • Hardware slow drain detection and buffer credit isolation to eliminate FCoE packet loss

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Form Factor: Single-width hot-swappable I/O blade for Dell PowerEdge M1000e rack enclosure
• Dimensions: Matches standard Dell M1000e single-wide blade I/O module form factor
• Bare module weight: ~1.2 kg (2.6 lbs)
• Operating temperature range: 10°C ~ 40°C (50°F ~ 104°F); certified altitude up to 3,000 meters
• Storage temperature range: -40°C ~ 60°C (-40°F ~ 140°F)
• Operating relative humidity: 10%–95% 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

Power Specifications (Power Supplied by Dell M1000e Chassis)

• Input voltage: 12V DC @ 6A from blade chassis midplane
• Typical full-load power consumption: 56W with all 16 host ports active
• Maximum peak power draw: 70W
• Heat dissipation: 239 BTU/hour typical
• MTBF: 291,523 hours at standard operating conditionsCisco

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

Layer 2 Ethernet & Converged FCoE Unified Fabric

• Single centralized management plane; all blade host 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 blade server high availability
• Hardware slow drain detection and buffer credit isolation to eliminate FCoE packet loss over blade midplane links
• NPV/NPIV FCoE edge virtualization for end-to-end blade rack LAN-SAN consolidation
• POAP zero-touch automatic provisioning for mass blade rack FEX deployment
• Port security, static MAC locking to restrict unauthorized blade server traffic access

QoS & Traffic Prioritization

• Four hardware priority queues per port (internal 10GBASE-KR host ports and external 10G SFP+ fabric 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, blade virtual server farms and HPC compute clusters
• DCBX auto-negotiation for lossless FCoE LAN/SAN traffic over blade midplane interconnects

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 optical transmit power, buffer utilization statistics
• Fault alert notifications via email, syslog and SNMP v1/v2c/v3
• GOLD Generic Online Diagnostics for continuous FEX blade hardware health validation without production traffic interruption
• Unified bulk firmware upgrade: Single CLI command on parent switch upgrades all attached blade and rack FEX devices simultaneously

6. Typical Deployment Scenarios for N2K-B22DELL-P Bare Blade Module

1. Dell M1000e blade rack unified LAN/FCoE access: Single-wide blade FEX integrates seamlessly inside Dell blade enclosures, consolidating 16 blade virtualization servers and lossless FCoE storage traffic onto a single managed fabric extension module, eliminating separate external rack access switches for blade infrastructure.
2. Enterprise financial blade database cluster deployment: Mild 2:1 oversubscription ratio and DCB lossless buffer architecture deliver stable low-latency FCoE transport for database blade storage workloads; bare -P variant allows customers to select custom FET breakout or long-reach LR/ER uplink transceivers per rack layout requirements.
3. Large-scale Dell blade data center standardized fabric rollout: Hot-swappable single-width blade design enables non-disruptive hardware replacement without powering down the entire blade chassis; centralized policy management on parent Nexus 5500 switches unifies blade and rack server access layer configuration.
4. Legacy Dell blade infrastructure migration: Transparent 1G-to-10G blade server upgrade path, retaining existing M1000e chassis hardware while adopting Cisco unified FCoE fabric architecture with single-pane NX-OS management.
5. Mid-market multi-tenant blade PoP deployment: Isolate tenant blade server and storage traffic via separate VLAN/VSAN zoning controlled centrally on upstream parent aggregation switches; 8 flexible 10G fabric uplinks support multi-link port-channels for high-bandwidth tenant traffic separation.

7. Standard Package Contents of N2K-B22DELL-P Bare Blade SKU

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

• SFP+ transceivers for 8 external fabric uplink ports: FET-10G breakout modules, 10G SR/LR/ER optical transceivers, passive Twinax DAC, active AOC cables
• Optional accessories: RJ45 serial console rollover cable, out-of-band management Ethernet patch cord
• Power supplies and fan trays: Fully integrated and supplied by the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade chassis (not sold with the FEX module)
• Feature software licenses: All fabric, routing and FCoE convergence features are licensed on the upstream parent Nexus 5500 switch; no separate FEX blade licenses required

Short Commercial Catalog Summary for Quotation