Cisco N2K-B22IBM-P Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• Core suffix definition:-P = Bare blade variant without factory pre-installed FET-10G breakout transceivers, contrasted with N2K-B22IBM-F which ships pre-populated with FET uplink optics.
• Key differentiation from other B22 blade models: Only 14 internal host ports (others like HP/Dell/Fujitsu B22 variants have 16 ports), matched to IBM Flex System chassis midplane layout constraintsCisco.
• Core advantages: Unified LAN/FCoE convergence for IBM blade racks, fixed mild 2:1 oversubscription ratio, fully powered and cooled by the host IBM Flex System chassis (no independent PSU/fan FRUs), zero-touch POAP provisioning and single-pane management alongside rack-mount Nexus 2000/2300 FEX devices.

2. Part Number Suffix Breakdown & Cross-Model Comparison

Full PN Breakdown

1. N2K: Cisco Nexus 2000/B22 Blade Fabric Extender product family
2. B22IBM-P: Single-width blade FEX module for IBM Flex System blade enclosures
   • B22: Blade form factor Fabric Extender series
   • IBM: Custom hardware tailored exclusively for IBM Flex System chassis midplane
   • -P: Bare unpopulated uplink variant, no factory pre-installed SFP+/FET-10G transceivers (customer must supply uplink optics separately)
3. Form factor: Single-width hot-swappable I/O blade slot for IBM Flex System chassis; power, cooling and airflow are fully managed by the blade enclosure, no replaceable power/fan modules on the FEX blade itself.

Hardware Comparison Table

Factory Bare Blade Included Hardware

1. Single-width hot-swappable FEX blade module compatible with standard I/O slots of IBM Flex System blade enclosures
2. Hidden internal midplane port bank: 14 × auto-sensing 1G/10GBASE-KR host interfaces hardwired to IBM Flex chassis backplane, mapped one-to-one to each IBM blade server mezzanine adapter
3. External rear panel port bank: 8 × SFP+ 10G fabric uplink ports for upstream parent Nexus switch interconnection; supports FET-10G breakout transceivers, 10G SR/LR/ER optical modules, passive Twinax DAC and active AOC fiber cables
4. Integrated front-panel status LED array: Global system health, fabric uplink link/activity, aggregated host port status, power fault alarm, UID locator beacon for maintenance identification
5. Blade extraction latch, hot-swap 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 IBM Flex System blade 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)
• Partial support (Ethernet only, FCoE disabled): Nexus 6000 / 7000 / 7700 Series
• Limited support (Ethernet-only, no FCoE): Nexus 9000 Series

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

4. Hardware Performance Specifications

1. Total host port capacity: 14×10G wire-speed downlink ports, total 140 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 (140G 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 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 IBM Flex System rack enclosures
• Dimensions: Matches standard single-wide IBM Flex 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 IBM Flex Blade Chassis)

• Input voltage: 12V DC @ 6A drawn from chassis midplane backplane
• Typical full-load power consumption: 56W with all 14 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 IBM blade 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-B22IBM-P Bare Blade Module

1. IBM Flex System unified LAN/FCoE blade rack consolidation: Single-width blade FEX integrates natively inside IBM Flex enclosures, consolidating 14 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 IBM 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 IBM blade infrastructure unified fabric migration: Transparent 1G-to-10G blade server upgrade path, retaining existing Flex 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-B22IBM-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 IBM Flex System blade 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