Cisco N3K-C3164Q-40GE Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• Suffix breakdown definition:
  • Q= 64 × universal 40G QSFP+ high-speed fabric ports
  • -40GE= Base integrated chassis optimized for 40G leaf/spine fabric deployments; factory preloaded with dual redundant power supplies and fan tray (airflow PI/PE selectable at order time), no optical transceivers bundled
• Core differentiators vs 1RU 3132Q series: Double port density (64×40G vs 32×40G), larger 48MB shared buffer, higher 5.12Tbps switching capacity, 2RU rack footprint, expanded routing/MAC table scale, dual airflow factory pre-populated FRU options, and spine-grade aggregation performance for large-scale data center core fabricsCisco.

2. Part Number Suffix Breakdown & Cross-Model Comparison

Full PN Breakdown

1. N3K: Cisco Nexus 3000 Series second-generation low-latency programmable data center Layer 2/3 switch family
2. C3164Q-40GE: 2RU ultra-high-density all-fiber integrated spine/leaf switch chassis
   • 3164: High-density 3100-X platform with total 64 universal 40G fabric ports
   • Q: 64 × multi-speed 40G QSFP+ bidirectional fiber fabric ports
   • 40GE: Factory integrated chassis variant optimized for 40G leaf/spine workloads; dual redundant PSUs + 3+1 fan tray pre-installed, airflow PI/PE configurable at ordering
3. Airflow flexibility: Matching port-intake (PI) or port-exhaust (PE) power supply and fan tray FRUs are factory preloaded based on customer order; mismatched airflow FRUs trigger thermal protection shutdown.

Hardware Comparison Table

Factory Integrated Chassis Included Hardware

1. 2RU standard 19-inch horizontal rack-mount fixed switch chassis
2. Rear full-width port panel bank:
   • 64 × universal 40G QSFP+ bidirectional ports for leaf-spine inter-switch core uplinks, dense virtualization compute hosts, high-speed all-flash storage interconnections
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
   • Dual USB Type-A flash storage ports for offline firmware upload, configuration backup and POAP zero-touch provisioning files
4. Full front-panel LED status array: Global system health (green normal / amber critical fault), independent fault LEDs for each power supply and fan tray, per-port dual-color lane link/activity indicators, blue UID locator beacon for rack asset identification during maintenance
5. Dual hot-swappable NXA-PAC-1200W AC power supplies factory pre-installed (port-intake PI or port-exhaust PE airflow matched to fan tray per order)
6. Hot-swappable redundant fan tray assembly with 3+1 redundant internal fans (airflow direction pre-matched to PSU FRUs)
7. Onboard system hardware: Multi-core x86 CPU, 16 GB system DRAM, 64 GB SSD persistent boot media
8. 19-inch rack mounting rails, front cable management brackets, hardware installation guide and global safety regulatory compliance documentation
9. No optical transceivers pre-installed (all QSFP+ optics sold separately as spare parts)

Items Not Included (Must Be Ordered Separately)

1. QSFP+ transceivers for all 64 fabric primary ports: 40G SR4/LR4/ER4, BiDi optical modules, passive Twinax DAC, active AOC fiber cables, and QSFP-to-4×SFP+ breakout splitter modules
2. Optional accessories: Serial console rollover cable, out-of-band management Ethernet patch cords, lockable front door, air filter panel
3. Software licenses: N3K-BAS1K9 base license unlocks full Layer 3 routing functionality; hardware-offloaded VXLAN multi-tenant virtualization features included without extra license fees

Supported Fabric & Parent Switch Compatibility

• Full unified fabric + hardware VXLAN + lossless DCB FCoE: Cisco Nexus 5600 / 7000 / 7700 / 9000 Series (minimum NX-OS 7.0(3)I7(2))
• Interoperable with Nexus 2000 blade & 2300 rack FEX devices for end-to-end LAN/FCoE storage convergence
• SDN automation compatibility: OpenFlow 1.3, NX-API REST/JSON APIs, embedded Linux containers, Ansible/Puppet/Chef DevOps toolchain integration

3. Hardware Port & Slot Layout

Rear Panel 64 Universal 40G QSFP+ Bidirectional Fabric Ports

1. Native 40GE mode: Direct high-bandwidth 40G inter-spine core uplinks for large-scale enterprise and cloud leaf-spine fabric aggregation
2. Breakout mode: With QSFP-to-4×SFP+ splitter transceivers, each port expands to four independent 10GE downlink channels to maximize port density and reduce optical hardware costs for dense 10G virtualization server racks
   All ports support jumbo frames configurable up to 9216-byte MTU, long-reach LR4/ER4 transceivers for cross-facility DCI interconnections, and IEEE DCB PFC/ETS lossless Ethernet standards for FCoE unified IP SAN storage workloads. All Layer 2 switching, ACL, MAC security and QoS traffic scheduling policies are enforced locally on the switch ASIC with full hardware VXLAN encapsulation/decapsulation offloadCisco.

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

1. Dual hot-swappable NXA-PAC-1200W AC power supplies (1+1 redundant power design enables non-disruptive live PSU replacement without full switch reboot)
2. Single hot-swappable fan tray assembly with 3+1 redundant internal fans; airflow direction fixed as either port-intake (PI) or port-exhaust (PE) per factory order, fully matched to PSU FRUs
3. Dedicated independent out-of-band management block: Dual USB flash ports, serial console port and 1G MGMT Ethernet port for offline firmware upgrade and configuration management, fully isolated from production data plane traffic.

Front Panel LED Status Array

• Global chassis 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 lane link/activity LEDs for all 64 rear QSFP+ fabric ports
• Remote-activatable blue UID beacon LED for fast rack asset identification during maintenance windows

4. Hardware Performance Specifications

1. Total downlink bandwidth: 64 × 40G wire-speed ports, aggregate 2560 Gbps full-duplex host bandwidth
2. Total uplink bandwidth: 64 × 40G bidirectional fabric ports (all ports function as flexible uplink/downlink), aggregate 2560 Gbps upstream fabric bandwidth
3. Fixed oversubscription ratio: 2:1 (2560 Gbps total host downlink bandwidth / 2560 Gbps usable uplink fabric bandwidth)
4. Non-blocking full-duplex switching fabric capacity: 5.12 TbpsCisco
5. Wire-speed forwarding throughput: 3.8 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 sub-microsecond store-and-forward latency, PHY-less silicon design optimized for low-jitter financial HFT and parallel HPC workloads
7. Dynamic shared packet buffer: 48 MB ultra-deep unified buffer pool to eliminate packet loss under extreme bursty virtualization and storage replication traffic
8. MAC address table capacity: 288,000 MAC entry storage
9. IPv4 Unicast Routing Table: 128,000 LPM prefix entries maximum, 120,000 IPv4 host entriesCisco
10. VLAN scaling: Up to 4096 standard IEEE 802.1Q tagged VLANs
11. Jumbo frame MTU: Configurable up to 9216 bytes for storage replication and large-scale big-data workloads
12. Spanning tree scale: 64 MSTP instances, 507 RPVST+ instances
13. Port-channel scaling: Maximum 64 EtherChannels, up to 32 physical ports per LACP fabric port-channel / vPC trunk
14. 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
15. Hardware lossless DCB & traffic offload features (fully controlled by NX-OS software):
    • IEEE 802.1Qbb PFC and 802.1Qaz ETS lossless Ethernet for FCoE unified storage transport
    • Native full line-rate hardware-offloaded VXLAN for scalable multi-tenant cloud fabric virtual machine mobility
    • 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: 2 RU (88.4 mm height) standard 19-inch horizontal rack mount
• Dimensions (H × W × D): 88.4 mm × 442 mm × 566 mm (3.48 × 17.4 × 22.3 inches)
• Integrated chassis weight (dual PSUs + fan tray, no transceivers): ~16.8 kg (37 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-1200W Factory Pre-Installed Dual Redundant PSUs)

• 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 as separate FRU variant)
• Typical full-system power consumption: 380W with all 64 QSFP+ ports fully populated; maximum peak power draw 780W
• Hot-swappable OIR replacement capability; no full switch reboot required during live PSU hardware swap
• MTBF: 291,523 hours under nominal operating conditions

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

Layer 2 Core Data Center Fabric Features

• IEEE 802.1Q trunking, PVLAN private VLAN isolation (max 4096 VLANs), 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 utilization
• 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 / 4,000 egress entries), route redistribution, prefix lists and route-map traffic segmentation policies
• Native line-rate hardware VXLAN bridging for large-scale multi-tenant cloud virtual machine 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
• Native integration with Puppet, Chef, Ansible DevOps toolchains 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-C3164Q-40GE Integrated Chassis

1. Large-scale leaf-spine data center spine aggregation switch: 64×40G QSFP+ ultra-high port density builds balanced 2:1 oversubscription fabric core tiers, 48MB ultra-deep shared buffer eliminates packet loss under massive east-west cloud multi-tenant virtualization traffic, factory pre-equipped dual redundant PSUs and fan trays eliminate separate cooling FRU procurement at deployment time, dual airflow FRU options support mixed cold/hot aisle rack cooling facility planning.
2. High-density HPC and big-data parallel compute cluster aggregation core: 64×40G fiber ports consolidate thousands of parallel compute nodes within a compact 2RU rack footprint, breakout 4×10G QSFP+ mode expands downlink port density to 256×10G without extra aggregation switches, deep shared buffer stabilizes distributed storage replication workload performance.
3. Mid-market financial co-location low-latency trading core switch: Deterministic sub-microsecond forwarding latency minimizes market transaction jitter, PHY-less silicon design eliminates PHY-induced latency variance, all-fiber QSFP+ ports connect directly to fiber-based trading hosts, redundant hot-swappable FRUs guarantee non-stop trading fabric uptime, standardized PI/PE airflow options comply with co-location facility cooling rack specifications.
4. Enterprise unified LAN/FCoE storage fabric aggregation switch: Interoperable with Nexus 2300 unified UPQ FEX devices for mixed blade enclosure + standalone fiber server rack consolidation, hardware-offloaded VXLAN delivers scalable virtualization isolation, DCB lossless Ethernet supports FCoE storage transport over fiber cabling to eliminate separate dedicated SAN core aggregation switches for large enterprise storage deployments.
5. Standardized mass cloud data center uniform fabric rollout: Integrated factory pre-populated power and cooling FRUs simplify spare part inventory management, dual airflow FRU compatibility supports flexible cold/hot aisle rack cooling design planning, single-pane DCNM management unifies configuration across all leaf/spine switch fleets in the fabric.

7. Standard Package Contents of N3K-C3164Q-40GE Integrated Factory SKU

Separately Mandatory Components (Not Included in This Bundle)

1. QSFP+ transceivers for all 64 fabric primary ports: 40G SR4/LR4/ER4/BiDi optics, QSFP-to-4×SFP+ breakout splitter modules, Twinax/AOC fiber cables
2. Optional feature software licenses: N3K-BAS1K9 base license required to unlock full Layer 3 routing functionality; VXLAN 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