Cisco N2K-B22HP-P Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• Core suffix definition:-P = Bare blade module without factory pre-installed FET-10G breakout transceivers, differentiated from the pre-populated N2K-B22HP-F variant that ships with factory loaded FET optics.
• Key design advantages: Native unified LAN/FCoE convergence for HPE blade racks, fixed mild 2:1 oversubscription ratio, fully powered and cooled by the host HPE blade chassis (no standalone PSU/fan FRUs), zero-touch POAP provisioning and single-pane unified fabric management alongside rack-mount Nexus 2000/2300 FEX devicesCisco.
• Compatibility: Natively supports HPE Flex-10 mezzanine adapters, enabling logical partitioning of server traffic for virtualization and storage workloads.

2. Part Number Suffix Breakdown & Cross-Model Comparison

Full PN Breakdown

1. N2K: Cisco Nexus 2000/B22 Blade Fabric Extender product family
2. B22HP-P: Single-width blade FEX module for HPE BladeSystem c-Class enclosures
   • B22: Blade form factor Fabric Extender series
   • HP: Customized hardware tailored exclusively for HPE BladeSystem c3000/c7000 midplane
   • -P: Bare unpopulated uplink variant, no factory pre-installed SFP+/FET-10G transceivers (customer-supplied uplink optics required)
3. Form factor: Single-width hot-swappable I/O blade slot for HPE c-Class blade chassis; power, cooling and airflow are entirely managed by the blade enclosure infrastructure, no replaceable power/fan modules on the FEX blade itselfCisco.

Hardware Comparison Table

Factory Bare Blade Included Hardware

1. Single-width hot-swappable FEX blade module compatible with standard I/O slots of HPE BladeSystem c3000 / c7000 enclosures
2. Hidden internal midplane port bank: 16 × auto-sensing 1G/10GBASE-KR host interfaces hardwired to the HPE blade chassis backplane, mapped one-to-one to each HPE blade server mezzanine adapter
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, passive Twinax DAC and active AOC cablesHewlett Pa...
4. Integrated front-panel status LED array: Global system health (blue normal / amber fault), fabric link activity, host port link status, power fault alarm, blue UID locator beacon for maintenance identificationCisco
5. Blade locking latch, hot-swap extraction handle, hardware installation guide and global safety & regulatory compliance documentation

Items Not Included (Must Be Ordered Separately)

• SFP+ transceivers for all 8 fabric uplink ports: FET-10G breakout modules, 10G Ethernet SR/LR/ER optical transceivers, passive Twinax copper DAC, active AOC fiber 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 host HPE BladeSystem c-Class chassis, not sold separately with the FEX blade module
• Feature software licenses: All unified fabric, FCoE and switching features are licensed on the upstream parent Nexus 5500/5600 switch; no dedicated FEX blade licenses required

Supported Parent Switch Platforms

• Full unified fabric feature set (Ethernet + Lossless FCoE): Cisco Nexus 5500 / 5600 Series (minimum NX-OS 6.0(2)N1(1) firmware release)Cisco
• Partial support (Ethernet only, FCoE disabled): Nexus 6000 / 7000 / 7700 Series
• Fully unsupported: Nexus 9000 Series (FCoE and unified fabric functions disabled)

3. Hardware Port & Slot Layout

Internal Midplane Host Interfaces (Chassis Backplane Side)

External Rear Fabric Uplink Ports (Rear Blade Panel)

Front Blade LED Status Array

• Global health LED: Solid blue = normal operation, flashing amber = hardware fault
• Power LED: Solid green = active power supply
• 8 fabric uplink dual-status LEDs: Green = link up, amber = no transceiver inserted
• Aggregated indicator bank for 16 internal blade host ports
• Blue UID locator beacon for rapid rack maintenance identificationCisco

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 total host bandwidth / 80G total fabric uplink bandwidth)Cisco
4. Full-duplex switching capacity: 160 Gbps; wire-speed forwarding throughput: 297 Mpps (64-byte minimum 64-bit Ethernet frames)
5. Unified shared packet buffer architecture optimized for virtualization, OLTP database and bursty FCoE storage workloads
6. VLAN support: Up to 4094 standard IEEE 802.1Q tagged VLANs, all VLAN configuration managed exclusively on the parent switch
7. Port-channel scaling: Supports up to 8 physical fabric uplink ports per LACP fabric port-channel or vPC trunk
8. Zero-touch provisioning: Automatic firmware image synchronization, configuration download and bulk fleet-wide upgrades triggered via a singleinstall allCLI command on the parent Nexus switch
9. Hardware lossless DCB & offload features (all controlled by parent NX-OS):
   • IEEE 802.1Qbb PFC and 802.1Qaz ETS lossless transport for FCoE over blade midplane links
   • vPC, FEX vPC and Enhanced vPC (EvPC) redundant high-availability fabric topologies
   • PVLAN private VLAN isolation, MSTP multi-instance spanning tree, four-tier hardware QoS 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 HPC big-data workloads
   • Hardware slow drain detection and buffer credit isolation to eliminate FCoE packet loss under storage traffic bursts

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Form Factor: Single-width hot-swappable I/O blade for HPE BladeSystem c3000 / c7000 rack enclosures
• Dimensions: Matches standard single-wide HPE c-Class blade I/O module form factor
• Bare blade 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 (10,000 ft)
• 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 Fully Supplied by HPE Blade Chassis)

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

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

Layer 2 Ethernet & Converged FCoE Unified Fabric

• Single unified management domain; all blade host ports appear as logical HIF (Host Interface) interfaces under the parent NX-OS switch
• 802.1Q VLAN trunking, PVLAN private VLAN isolation (maximum 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 mitigate FCoE packet loss on blade midplane links
• NPV/NPIV FCoE edge virtualization for end-to-end consolidated LAN/SAN blade rack architecture
• POAP zero-touch automatic provisioning for mass blade chassis FEX deployment fleets
• Port security, static MAC address locking to block unauthorized blade server traffic access
• Auto-sensing 1G/10G operation on all internal midplane host ports compatible with HPE Flex-10 mezzanine adapters

QoS & Traffic Prioritization

• Four independent hardware priority queues per port (internal 10GBASE-KR host ports and external 10G SFP+ fabric uplinks)
• Ingress traffic policing, egress bandwidth shaping to throttle low-priority tape backup and replication streams
• Pre-built optimized QoS templates for OLTP databases, all-flash NVMe storage, 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, graphical provisioning and REST API automation
• Real-time streaming telemetry: port throughput, latency, frame error counters, SFP optical transmit power, granular buffer utilization statistics
• Fault alert notifications via email, syslog and SNMP v1/v2c/v3
• GOLD Generic Online Diagnostics for continuous non-disruptive blade hardware health validation
• Unified bulk firmware upgrade: Single parent switch CLI command upgrades all attached blade and rack FEX devices simultaneously

6. Typical Deployment Scenarios for N2K-B22HP-P Bare Blade Module

1. HPE BladeSystem c-Class unified LAN/FCoE access consolidation: Single-wide blade FEX integrates natively inside HPE c3000/c7000 blade enclosures, consolidating 16 blade virtualization compute nodes and lossless FCoE storage traffic onto a single managed fabric extension blade, eliminating separate external rack access switches for blade infrastructure.
2. Enterprise financial database blade cluster deployments: Mild 2:1 oversubscription ratio and DCB lossless buffer architecture deliver stable low-latency FCoE transport for database blade storage workloads; the bare -P variant allows customers to select custom FET breakout or long-reach LR/ER uplink transceivers to match rack cabling layout requirements.
3. Large-scale standardized HPE blade data center fabric rollout: Hot-swappable single-width blade design enables non-disruptive hardware replacement without power cycling the entire blade chassis; centralized policy management on parent Nexus 5500 switches unifies configuration across blade and rack server access layers.
4. Legacy HPE blade infrastructure unified fabric migration: Transparent 1G-to-10G blade server upgrade path, retaining existing c-Class chassis hardware while adopting Cisco end-to-end 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 independent 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-B22HP-P Bare Blade SKU

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

• SFP+ transceivers for all 8 external fabric uplink ports: FET-10G breakout modules, 10G SR/LR/ER optical transceivers, passive Twinax DAC, active AOC fiber 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 HPE BladeSystem c-Class chassis (not sold with the FEX blade module)
• Feature software licenses: All fabric, routing and FCoE convergence features are licensed on the upstream parent Nexus 5500/5600 switch; no separate FEX blade licenses required

Short Commercial Catalog Summary for Quotation