Cisco N3K-C3172PQ-XL Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• Suffix breakdown definition:
  • PQ= 48 × multi-speed SFP+ fiber downlinks + six universal 40G QSFP+ fabric uplink ports
  • -XL= Extended memory hardware variant with 8GB DRAM and 16GB Logflash, bare chassis with no bundled power, fan or optical FRUs, optimized for large routing scale deployments
• Core differentiators vs standard N3K-C3172PQ-10GE: Doubled 8GB system DRAM for expanded MAC/routing table capacity, larger 16GB persistent Logflash, faster 2.5GHz CPU, superior support for object-model programming and large BGP EVPN multi-tenant fabrics; dual airflow FRU compatibility to match cold/hot aisle rack layouts, native interoperability with Nexus 2000/2300 FEX devices, POAP zero-touch provisioning, and single-pane fabric management via Cisco DCNM.

2. Part Number Suffix Breakdown & Cross-Model Comparison

Full PN Breakdown

1. N3K: Cisco Nexus 3000 Series low-latency programmable data center Layer 2/3 switch family
2. C3172PQ-XL: 1RU extended-memory all-fiber ToR bare chassis
   • 3172: High-density 3172 platform with total 54 combined downlink + uplink ports
   • PQ: 48 × auto-sensing 1/10G SFP+ fiber host ports + six universal 40G QSFP+ high-speed fabric uplink ports
   • XL: Extended memory bare unpopulated chassis variant with 8GB DRAM and 16GB Logflash; no factory pre-installed power supplies, fan trays or optical transceivers
3. Airflow flexibility: Two separate FRU families available: Port-side Intake (PI / reverse airflow) and Port-side Exhaust (PE / forward airflow). Mismatched airflow power supply and fan tray modules trigger thermal protection shutdownCisco.

Hardware Comparison Table

Factory Bare Chassis Included Hardware

1. 1RU standard 19-inch horizontal rack-mount passive switch chassis
2. Rear port panel interface bank:
   • 48 × auto-sensing 1/10G SFP+ multi-speed fiber downlink ports for virtualization compute hosts, IP SAN storage appliances
   • 6 × universal 40G QSFP+ bidirectional fabric uplink ports supporting 40G SR4/LR4/ER4, BiDi optical modules, passive Twinax DAC, active AOC fiber cables, and QSFP-to-4×SFP+ breakout splitter modules
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, configuration backup and POAP provisioning files
4. Full front-panel LED status array: Global system health (green normal / amber critical fault), individual PSU fault alarms, fan tray fault indicators, per-port dual-color link/activity LEDs, blue UID locator beacon for rack asset identification during maintenance
5. Dual hot-swappable power supply bays (compatible with separate PI / PE airflow AC/DC power FRUs)
6. Single hot-swappable fan tray slot with multiple redundant internal fans; airflow direction determined by matching fan/PSU FRU selection
7. Onboard hardware: 2.5GHz multi-core x86 CPU, 8GB system DRAM, 16GB Logflash eUSB boot mediaCisco
8. Standard 19-inch rack mounting rails, front cable management brackets, hardware installation guide and global safety regulatory compliance documentation
9. No power supplies, fan trays or optical transceivers pre-installed (all FRUs sold separately as spare parts)

Items Not Included (Must Be Ordered Separately)

1. Hot-swappable AC/DC redundant power supplies (400W rating, port-intake PI or port-exhaust PE airflow variants optional; dual PSUs recommended for 1+1 power redundancy)
2. Single hot-swappable fan tray assembly with redundant internal fans; airflow direction must fully match the selected power supply modules
3. SFP+ transceivers for all 48 downlink ports: 1G/10G SR/LR/ER optical modules, Twinax/AOC DAC fiber cables
4. 40G QSFP+ transceivers for six fabric uplink ports: 40G SR4/LR4/ER4, BiDi optics, QSFP-to-4×SFP+ breakout splitter modules, Twinax/AOC short-range cables
5. Optional accessories: Serial console rollover cable, out-of-band management Ethernet patch cords, lockable front door, air filter panel
6. Software licenses: N3K-BAS1K9 base license unlocks full Layer 3 routing functionality; base Layer 2 switching enabled without additional license fees; VXLAN bridging supported with standard NX-OS firmware upgrade

Supported Fabric & Parent Switch Compatibility

• Full unified fabric + lossless DCB FCoE: Cisco Nexus 5500 / 5600 / 6000 Series (minimum NX-OS 7.0(3)I3(1))
• Layer 2/Layer3 Ethernet only: Nexus 7000 / 7700 / 9000 Series
• Native interoperability with Nexus 2000 blade & 2300 rack FEX devices for end-to-end consolidated LAN/SAN data center architecture
• SDN compatibility: OpenFlow 1.3, NX-API REST APIs, Ansible/Puppet/Chef DevOps automation integration

3. Hardware Port & Slot Layout

Rear Panel 48 SFP+ 1/10G Downlinks & 6 QSFP+ 40G Fabric Uplink Ports

1. 48 × Auto-Sensing 1/10G SFP+ Fiber Host Ports
   IEEE 802.3ae compliant multi-speed fiber interfaces with auto-negotiation of 1G or 10G line rates, supporting short-reach SR and long-reach LR/ER optical transceivers for cross-rack replication links. Implements IEEE DCB PFC/ETS lossless Ethernet standards for FCoE unified IP SAN storage workloads, jumbo frames configurable up to 9216-byte MTU. All Layer 2 switching, ACL, MAC security and QoS traffic scheduling policies are enforced locally on the PHY-less ASIC for stable low latency; extended 8GB DRAM supports larger MAC and routing table scale compared to base 4GB modelsCisco.
2. 6 × Universal 40G QSFP+ High-Speed Fabric Uplink Ports
   Two configurable operation modes for leaf-spine inter-switch connections:
3. Native 40GE mode: Direct high-bandwidth 40G inter-switch uplinks for scalable enterprise leaf-spine fabric core interconnections
4. Breakout mode: With QSFP-to-4×SFP+ splitter 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 blocking links and maximizing bandwidth utilization.

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

1. Dual hot-swappable AC/DC power supply bays (supports 1+1 redundant power inputs for non-disruptive live PSU replacement without full switch reboot)
2. Single hot-swappable fan tray assembly with multiple redundant internal fans; airflow direction fully determined by matching fan and power supply FRU selection
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 rear SFP+ downlink ports and six QSFP+ 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 × 40G full-duplex QSFP+ ports, aggregate 240 Gbps upstream fabric bandwidth
3. Fixed oversubscription ratio: 2:1 (480 Gbps total host downlink bandwidth / 240 Gbps total fabric uplink bandwidth)
4. Non-blocking full-duplex switching fabric capacity: 1.4 TbpsCisco
5. Wire-speed forwarding throughput: 1 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 microsecond-scale store-and-forward latency, PHY-less silicon design optimized for low-jitter financial HFT and parallel HPC workloads
7. Dynamic shared packet buffer: 12 MB unified shared buffer pool to mitigate packet loss under heavy bursty virtualization and storage replication trafficCisco
8. System DRAM: 8GB extended memory (4GB extra vs standard 3172PQ-10GE) for expanded MAC and routing table capacityCisco
9. MAC address table capacity: 288,000 MAC entry storageCisco
10. IPv4 Unicast Routing Table: 24,000 prefix entries (expanded capacity via XL memory upgrade)Cisco
11. VLAN scaling: Up to 4096 standard IEEE 802.1Q tagged VLANsCisco
12. Jumbo frame MTU: Configurable up to 9216 bytes for storage replication and large-scale big-data workloadsCisco
13. Spanning tree scale: 64 MSTP instances, 512 RSTP instancesCisco
14. Port-channel scaling: Maximum 64 EtherChannels, up to 16 physical ports per LACP fabric port-channel / vPC trunkCisco
15. 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
16. 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
    • Software-supported VXLAN bridging and BGP EVPN control plane for multi-tenant virtual machine mobility (no hardware tunnel offload)
    • 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 (1.72 × 17.3 × 19.9 inches)
• Bare chassis weight (no PSUs, fans, transceivers): ~7.8 kg (17.2 lbs)
• Fully loaded maximum weight (dual PSUs + fan tray + fully populated transceivers): ~10.3 kg (22.7 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 (Sold Separately)

• AC PSU input range: 100–240 VAC, 50/60 Hz, typical energy efficiency 89–91%
• DC PSU input range: -40 to -72 VDC negative telecom DC power supply (separate FRU variant)
• Typical full-system power consumption: 143W with all 48 SFP+ ports fully populated; maximum peak power draw 293W
• 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, 32-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 (4000 ingress / 1000 egress entries), route redistribution, prefix lists and route-map traffic segmentation policies
• Expanded routing table capacity enabled by XL extended memory for large-scale BGP EVPN multi-tenant fabrics
• Software VXLAN bridging for virtual machine mobility (no hardware tunnel offload compared to 3132Q-V integrated switches)

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-C3172PQ-XL Bare Chassis

1. Large-scale enterprise all-fiber leaf-spine data center leaf switch: Extended 8GB DRAM supports massive BGP routing tables for multi-tenant virtualization racks, 48×SFP+ fiber downlinks serve virtualization server racks connected via Nexus 2300 unified UPQ FEX devices, merging general LAN and lossless FCoE storage traffic on a compact 1RU switch. Bare chassis dual airflow FRU compatibility allows facility teams to select matching power/fan cooling hardware aligned with standardized cold/hot aisle rack layout rules.
2. HPC and big-data parallel compute cluster rack aggregation: Expanded memory and deep shared buffer eliminate route table exhaustion and burst packet loss under heavy east-west parallel compute and storage replication traffic, compact 1RU footprint saves valuable rack space for high-density compute farms, breakout 4×10G QSFP uplink mode reduces optical hardware capital expenditure for large cluster fleets.
3. Mid-market financial co-location low-latency trading leaf switch: Deterministic microsecond forwarding latency minimizes market transaction jitter, all-fiber SFP+ ports connect directly to fiber-based trading hosts, dual airflow FRU options comply with standardized co-location facility cooling rack rules, redundant hot-swappable FRUs guarantee non-stop trading fabric uptime. Bare chassis design allows customers to select matching airflow power/fan FRUs separately to align with facility cooling standards.
4. Small-scale unified LAN/FCoE data center edge aggregation: Interoperable with Nexus 2000 blade FEX devices for mixed blade enclosure + standalone fiber server rack consolidation, supporting lossless FCoE storage transport over fiber cabling to eliminate separate dedicated SAN access switches for mid-sized storage deployments with large routing scale requirements.
5. Standardized mass enterprise data center uniform fabric rollout: Bare chassis SKU separates chassis and cooling/power spare part inventory management, eliminating thermal fault incidents caused by mismatched airflow power/fan modules during on-site hardware replacement for large facility deployments, dual airflow FRU compatibility supports flexible cold/hot aisle rack cooling design planning.

7. Standard Package Contents of N3K-C3172PQ-XL Bare Chassis SKU

Separately Mandatory Components (Not Included in Base Chassis Bundle)

1. One or two hot-swappable AC/DC power supplies (port-side intake PI or port-side exhaust PE airflow variant selected to match fan trays; dual PSUs recommended for 1+1 power redundancy)
2. One matching airflow hot-swappable fan tray (required for full system cooling; mismatched airflow fan modules trigger thermal protection shutdown)
3. SFP+ transceivers for all 48 downlink ports: 1G/10G SR/LR/ER optical transceivers, Twinax/AOC DAC fiber cables
4. 40G QSFP+ transceivers, BiDi optics and 40G-to-4×10G breakout splitter cables for six fabric uplink QSFP+ ports

• Optional feature software licenses: N3K-BAS1K9 base license required to unlock full Layer 3 routing functionality; Layer 2 switching features enabled by default without 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