Cisco N3K-C31108PC-V Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• Suffix breakdown:
  • PC= 48 SFP+ fiber downlinks + 6 QSFP28 high-speed uplinks
  • -V= Fixed port-side intake airflow (PI), all matching PSUs/fans must use port-intake FRUs; incompatible with port-exhaust PE airflow modules
• Core differentiators vs older Nexus 3064 series: X86 dual-core CPU, 64 GB SSD boot storage, native 100G QSFP28 uplinks, full VXLAN/EVPN hardware offload, deeper shared buffer, and DevOps automation API supportCisco.

2. Part Number Suffix Breakdown & Cross-Model Comparison

Full PN Breakdown

1. N3K: Cisco Nexus 3000 Series low-latency programmable data center switch family
2. C31108PC-V: 1RU all-fiber VXLAN leaf switch
   • 31108: 3100-V high-performance platform with 48 downlink + 6 uplink aggregate ports
   • PC: 48 × SFP+ fiber downlinks + six QSFP28 universal high-speed uplink ports
   • -V: Fixed port-side intake airflow (Port-side Intake, PI)
3. Airflow lock: All power supply and fan tray FRUs must be port-intake (PI) type; mismatched port-exhaust (PE) FRUs trigger thermal protection shutdown.

Hardware Comparison Table

Factory Standard Included Hardware

1. 1RU standard 19-inch horizontal rack-mount integrated switch chassis
2. Rear port panel:
   • 48 × auto-sensing SFP+ 1/10G downlink ports for blade servers, virtualization hosts, all-flash storage
   • 6 × QSFP28 universal uplink ports supporting 100G/40G optics, BiDi, Twinax/AOC, and 4×10G breakout transceivers
3. Front integrated out-of-band management subsystem:
   • RJ45 hybrid RS232 serial console port
   • Dedicated 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band MGMT Ethernet port
   • USB Type-A flash storage port for offline firmware upload, config backup, POAP files
4. Front-panel LED status array: Global system health, individual PSU/fan fault alarms, per-port link/activity dual-color LEDs, blue UID locator beacon
5. Dual hot-swappable power supply bays (factory dual NXA-PAC-650W-PI port-intake AC PSUs included)
6. Hot-swappable redundant fan tray assembly with multiple internal fans (port-intake airflow pre-installed)
7. 19-inch rack mounting rails, extraction handle, hardware installation guide, global safety regulatory documentation
8. Pre-installed 64 GB SSD boot media, 16 GB system DRAM, dual-core 2.5 GHz x86 CPUCisco

Items Not Included (Must Be Ordered Separately)

• SFP+ transceivers for all 48 downlink ports: 1G/10G SR/LR/ER optical modules, passive Twinax DAC, active AOC fiber cables
• QSFP28 uplink transceivers: 100G SR4/LR4, 40G SR4/LR4, BiDi optics, QSFP28-to-4×SFP+ breakout modules
• Optional accessories: Serial console rollover cable, out-of-band management patch cords, lockable front door, air filter panel
• Software licenses: N3K-BAS1K9 base license unlocks full Layer 3 routing; VXLAN/EVPN features included without extra license

Supported Fabric & Parent Compatibility

• Full unified fabric + hardware VXLAN/EVPN: Cisco Nexus 5600 / 7000 / 7700 / 9000 Series
• Interoperable with Nexus 2000/2300 blade & rack FEX devices for end-to-end LAN/FCoE convergence
• Minimum NX-OS firmware version: 7.0(3)I7(8) for complete VXLAN/EVPN feature activationCisco

3. Hardware Port & Slot Layout

Rear Panel 48 SFP+ Downlink & 6 QSFP28 Uplink Ports

1. 48 × Auto-Sensing 1/10G SFP+ Host Ports
   IEEE 802.3ab/ae compliant multi-speed fiber interfaces, supporting auto-negotiation of 1G or 10G speeds. Interfaces implement IEEE DCB PFC/ETS lossless Ethernet for FCoE unified storage workloads, jumbo frames up to 9216-byte MTU, and long-reach LR/ER transceivers for cross-rack replication links. All Layer 2 switching, ACL, MAC security and QoS policies are enforced locally on the switch hardware.
2. 6 × Universal QSFP28 High-Speed Fabric Uplink Ports
   Three configurable operation modes for leaf-spine inter-switch connections:
3. Native 100GE mode: High-bandwidth 100G inter-spine uplinks for large-scale cloud fabrics
4. Native 40GE mode: Standard 40G leaf-spine interconnections
5. Breakout mode: With QSFP28-to-4×SFP+ breakout transceivers, each port expands to four independent 10GE fabric channels to multiply uplink port density and reduce optical hardware costs
   All six uplink ports can be bundled into LACP fabric port-channels to support vPC / Enhanced vPC (EvPC) high-availability topologies, eliminating STP blocked links and maximizing uplink bandwidth utilization.

Front Panel Redundant FRU Slots & Out-of-Band Management Interfaces

1. Dual hot-swappable NXA-PAC-650W-PI port-intake AC power supplies (1+1 redundant power design enables non-disruptive live PSU replacement without switch reboot)
2. Single hot-swappable fan tray assembly with redundant internal fans; fixed port-side intake airflow matching PSU FRUs
3. Dedicated independent out-of-band management block: Serial console port, 1G MGMT Ethernet port and USB flash storage port for offline firmware upgrade and configuration management, fully isolated from production data plane traffic.

Front Panel LED Status Array

• Global health LED: Solid green = normal operational state, solid amber = critical hardware fault
• Separate fault indicator LEDs for each power supply and fan tray assembly
• Per-port dual-color link/activity LEDs for all 48 SFP+ downlinks and six QSFP28 uplink ports
• Remote-activatable blue UID beacon LED for fast rack asset identification during maintenance windows

4. Hardware Performance Specifications

1. Total downlink bandwidth: 48 × 10G wire-speed ports, aggregate 480 Gbps full-duplex host bandwidth
2. Total uplink bandwidth: 6 × 100G full-duplex QSFP28 ports, aggregate 600 Gbps upstream fabric bandwidth
3. Fixed oversubscription ratio: 2:1 (480 Gbps host bandwidth / 600 Gbps uplink bandwidth)
4. Non-blocking full-duplex switching fabric capacity: 2.8 TbpsCisco
5. Wire-speed forwarding throughput: 1.4 Bpps (billion packets per second) at minimum 64-byte Ethernet frames (all ports operate full line-rate L2/L3 simultaneously)
6. Forwarding latency: Ultra-low deterministic ~650 nanosecond store-and-forward latency, optimized for low-jitter financial HFT workloadsCisco
7. Dynamic shared packet buffer: 16 MB large deep shared buffer pool to mitigate packet loss under heavy storage/virtualization traffic burstsCisco
8. MAC address table capacity: 288,000 MAC entry storage
9. VLAN scaling: Up to 4096 standard IEEE 802.1Q tagged VLANs
10. Jumbo frame MTU: Configurable up to 9216 bytes for storage replication and HPC big-data workloads
11. Spanning tree scale: 64 MSTP instances, 512 RSTP instances
12. Port-channel scaling: Maximum 64 EtherChannels, up to 32 physical ports per LACP fabric port-channel / vPC trunkCisco
13. Zero-touch POAP provisioning: Automatic firmware synchronization, full configuration download and fleet-wide bulk upgrades triggered via a singleinstall allCLI command on the parent aggregation switch
14. Hardware lossless DCB & traffic offload features (fully controlled by NX-OS software):
    • IEEE 802.1Qbb PFC and 802.1Qaz ETS lossless Ethernet for FCoE storage transport
    • Native hardware-offloaded VXLAN and BGP EVPN for scalable multitenant cloud fabrics
    • vPC, FEX vPC and Enhanced vPC (EvPC) redundant Layer 2 multipathing high availability
    • Four independent hardware priority queues per port with WRR/DRR traffic scheduling
    • PVLAN private VLAN isolation, UDLD link failure monitoring, broadcast/multicast storm control
    • IEEE 1588 PTP boundary clock for precise sub-microsecond time synchronization in financial co-location environments
    • Expanded SAN-specific debug counters to track FCoE pause frames and storage buffer credit loss

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 × 505 mm
• Bare chassis weight (no transceivers): ~7.0 kg (15.4 lbs); fully loaded with dual PSUs + fan tray: ~9.0 kg (19.8 lbs)
• Operating temperature range: 0°C ~ 40°C (32°F ~ 104°F); certified altitude up to 3,000 meters (10,000 ft)
• Storage temperature range: -40°C ~ 70°C (-40°F ~ 158°F)
• Operating relative humidity: 10%–85% 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 (NXA-PAC-650W-PI Port-Intake, Factory Included)

• AC input range: 100–240 VAC, 50/60 Hz, typical energy efficiency 89–91%
• DC input option: -40 to -72 VDC negative telecom DC power supply (sold separately)
• Typical full-system power consumption: 150W with all 48 downlink ports fully populatedCisco
• Hot-swappable OIR replacement capability; no full switch reboot required during live PSU hardware swap
• MTBF: 300,000 hours under nominal operating conditions

5. NX-OS Software Feature Set (Managed via CLI / Cisco DCNM Graphical Platform)

Layer 2 Core Data Center Fabric Features

• IEEE 802.1Q trunking, PVLAN private VLAN isolation, transparent VTP mode
• RSTP/MSTP spanning tree suite with BPDU guard, root guard and aggressive UDLD link monitoring
• Static & dynamic LACP EtherChannels, vPC dual-active high availability to eliminate STP blocking links and maximize uplink bandwidth
• DHCP snooping, dynamic ARP inspection, port security MAC address locking, broadcast/multicast storm control
• DCB PFC/ETS lossless Ethernet for Fibre Channel over Ethernet unified storage convergence
• IEEE 1588 PTP precision time synchronization optimized for low-latency high-frequency trading environments

Layer 3 Routing & Virtualization Features (Requires Optional N3K-BAS1K9 Base License)

• Unicast routing protocols: Static routes, OSPFv2, EIGRP, RIPv2, BGP-4, 64-way ECMP multi-path load balancing
• Multicast routing suite: IGMPv2/v3, PIM-SM, MSDP for video streaming and inter-rack storage replication workloads
• First-hop redundancy protocols: HSRP, VRRP for gateway failover redundancy
• Hardware-accelerated IP ACLs (16,000 ingress / 1,000 egress entries), route redistribution, prefix lists and route-map traffic segmentation policiesCisco
• Native line-rate hardware VXLAN routing, BGP EVPN control plane for large-scale multitenant cloud mobility

Security, Monitoring & DevOps Automation Tools

• AAA authentication stack (TACACS+/RADIUS/Local user database), SSHv2 encrypted out-of-band management sessions
• SNMP v1/v2c/v3 remote monitoring, centralized syslog logging, RMON traffic statistics collection
• Cisco DCNM single-pane graphical fabric monitoring, automated provisioning and REST API integration for data center automation
• NX-API REST/CLI APIs, Python scripting, Embedded Event Manager (EEM) for custom automation workflows
• Puppet, Chef, Ansible DevOps toolchain native integration for infrastructure-as-code deployments
• GOLD Generic Online Diagnostics for continuous non-disruptive hardware health validation
• Unified bulk fleet-wide firmware upgrade via single parent switch CLI command for uniform fabric fleets
• Real-time streaming telemetry for port latency, buffer utilization and granular error counter visibility

6. Typical Deployment Scenarios for N3K-C31108PC-V Integrated Chassis

1. Large-scale cloud leaf-spine fabric leaf switch: Native 100G QSFP28 uplinks build high-bandwidth modern cloud leaf-spine architecture; hardware-offloaded VXLAN/BGP EVPN delivers scalable multitenant virtualization isolation, fixed port-intake airflow standardizes cold-aisle rack cooling design for mass data center fleets.
2. Low-latency financial HFT co-location leaf deployment: Sub-650ns deterministic forwarding latency minimizes trading transaction delay; 48×10G SFP+ fiber downlinks connect directly to fiber-based trading hosts, deep 16 MB shared buffer eliminates burst packet loss under peak market traffic.
3. Enterprise all-fiber unified LAN/FCoE data center access layer consolidation: High-density SFP+ fiber downlinks connect virtualization server racks paired with Nexus 2300 unified UPQ FEX devices, merging general LAN server traffic and lossless FCoE all-flash storage workloads on a single compact leaf switch tier with mild 2:1 oversubscription balanced for general enterprise virtualization workloads.
4. HPC & big-data parallel compute cluster rack aggregation: Breakout 4×10G QSFP28 mode reduces optical hardware procurement costs by expanding fabric port density without extra rack switches, large shared buffer absorbs massive bursty east-west parallel compute and storage replication traffic.
5. Standardized cold-aisle data center uniform fabric rollout: Integrated factory dual port-intake PSUs and fan trays eliminate separate cooling FRU procurement at deployment time, simplifying spare part inventory management and avoiding thermal faults caused by mismatched airflow hardware during on-site rack commissioning.

7. Standard Package Contents of N3K-C31108PC-V Integrated Factory SKU

Separately Mandatory Components (Not Included in Base Chassis Bundle)

• SFP+ transceivers for all 48 downlink ports: 1G/10G SR/LR/ER optical transceivers, Twinax/AOC DAC fiber cables
• QSFP28 transceivers for six fabric uplink ports: 100G/40G SR4/LR4/ER4/BiDi optics, QSFP28-to-4×SFP+ breakout splitter modules
• Optional feature software licenses: N3K-BAS1K9 base license required to unlock full Layer 3 routing functionality; VXLAN/EVPN Layer 2 virtualization features enabled without additional license activation
• Auxiliary accessories: RJ45 serial console rollover cable, out-of-band management Ethernet patch cords, lockable front door, air filter panel

Short Commercial Catalog Summary for Quotation