Cisco N3K-C3524P-10G Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

N3K-C3524P-10Gis the base integrated 1RU ultra-low-latency cut-through Layer 2/3 Top-of-Rack (ToR) switch from Cisco Nexus 3500 series, released April 1, 2015, End-of-Sale (Jan 31, 2022) and End-of-Support-Life (Jan 31, 2027)Cisco. It is a factory pre-populated fixed chassis with dual hot-swappable redundant AC power supplies and 4 redundant hot-swappable fans, supporting dual airflow options (Port-side Intake PI / Port-side Exhaust PE) selectable at ordering. Built on Cisco Algo Boost ASIC for sub-200ns consistent cut-through latency, this platform ships with24 active 1/10G SFP+ fiber ports(licensable upgrade to unlock full 48-port capacity)Cisco, targeted for low-latency financial trading, HPC clusters, iSCSI/FCoE storage, and small-scale leaf-spine data center fabrics.

Running modular Cisco NX-OS, it delivers wire-rate non-blocking forwarding, 6MB shared buffer, standard 2GB Logflash storage, basic software VXLAN bridging, IEEE DCB lossless storage features, and full SDN automation including OpenFlow 1.3, NX-API REST APIs and POAP zero-touch provisioning.

Suffix breakdown definition:
- P= SFP+ fiber port platform
- 24= 24 active enabled 1/10G SFP+ ports (48 total physical ports on chip, license upgrade unlocks all)
- -10G= Base non-X generation standard memory integrated chassis, factory preloaded with dual redundant power and fan tray, no bundled optical transceivers
Core differentiators vs N3K-C3524P-10GX/-XL: Smaller base 6MB shared buffer, 2GB Logflash, standard memory ASIC without enhanced telemetry, fixed 24 active ports upgradable to 48; differentiated from earlier 3172 series by Algo Boost sub-200ns nanosecond cut-through latency and dedicated low-latency trading ASIC architecture.

N3K-C3524P-10G Front Port Panel

Rear Power/Fan Side

2. Part Number Suffix Breakdown & Cross-Model Comparison

Full PN Breakdown

N3K: Cisco Nexus 3000 Series low-latency cut-through data center Layer 2/3 switch family
C3524P-10G: 1RU base integrated low-latency ToR switch chassis
- 3524: 3500 Algo Boost ultra-low-latency platform, 48 physical SFP+ ports (24 active base license)
- P: SFP+ fiber optical port design
- 10G: Base standard-memory integrated chassis with factory pre-installed dual redundant AC power supplies + 4+1 redundant fan tray, airflow PI/PE selectable at order
Airflow flexibility: Customers order either port-intake (PI, air flows front-to-back) or port-exhaust (PE, air flows back-to-front) factory pre-matched power and fan FRUs; mixed airflow FRUs trigger thermal protection shutdown.

Hardware Comparison Table

表格

Item	N3K-C3524P-10G (Base 24-port Integrated Chassis)	N3K-C3524P-10GX (Enhanced X Integrated Chassis)	N3K-C3172PQ-10GE (1RU 3172 Series Bare Chassis)
Physical Ports	48 × SFP+ 1/10G fiber (24 active base, upgrade to 48)	48 × SFP+ 1/10G fiber (24 active base)	48 × SFP+ 1/10G fiber (all active)
Latency	Sub-200ns cut-through Algo Boost	Sub-200ns optimized low-jitter Algo Boost	Microsecond store-and-forward PHY-less
Shared Buffer	6MB base unified buffer	12MB large enhanced buffer	12MB unified buffer
Logflash Storage	2GB basic persistent storage	4GB expanded Logflash	16GB Logflash
Native VXLAN/EVPN	Software-only VXLAN bridging	Optimized software VXLAN + expanded telemetry	Software-only VXLAN bridging
Form Factor	1RU integrated pre-populated PSUs/fans	1RU integrated pre-populated PSUs/fans	1RU unpopulated bare chassis
Oversubscription Ratio	Non-blocking at wire-rate (480Gbps total capacity)	Non-blocking wire-rate	Fixed 2:1 oversubscription
Primary Use Case	Entry-level low-latency trading, small HPC, entry leaf-spine	Heavy burst financial HFT, large multi-tenant fabrics	General mid-scale virtualization leaf racks

Factory Integrated Chassis Included Hardware

1RU standard 19-inch horizontal rack-mount fixed switch chassis
Front full-width port panel bank:
- 48 × auto-sensing 1/10G SFP+ bidirectional fiber ports (only 24 ports enabled by default; license upgrade unlocks full 48-port capacity)Cisco
Front integrated out-of-band management subsystem:
- RJ45 hybrid RS232 serial console port
- 1 × dedicated 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band MGMT Ethernet port
- Single USB Type-A flash storage port for offline firmware upload, configuration backup and POAP zero-touch provisioning files
- Blue UID locator beacon LED for rack asset identification during maintenance
Front-panel global status LED: Green = normal operation, amber = critical hardware fault; separate fault indicators for each power supply and fan tray
Rear side dual hot-swappable AC power supply slots (factory preloaded with two matching airflow NXA-PAC-500W AC power supplies, 1+1 redundant power architecture)
Rear hot-swappable fan tray assembly with 4 active + 1 spare redundant internal fans; airflow direction pre-matched to PSU FRUs per customer order
Onboard system hardware: Dual-core x86 CPU, standard base memory, 2GB Logflash eUSB boot media, 1-PPS timing sync RF port for financial trading clock synchronization
Standard 19-inch rack mounting rails, front cable management brackets, hardware installation guide and global safety regulatory compliance documentation
No optical transceivers pre-installed (all SFP+ optics sold separately as spare parts)

Items Not Included (Must Be Ordered Separately)

SFP+ transceivers for SFP+ fabric ports: 1G/10G SR/LR/ER optical modules, passive Twinax DAC, active AOC fiber cables
Optional upgrade license N3K-LIC-3524-48 to unlock all 48 SFP+ physical ports from default 24 active ports
Optional accessories: Serial console rollover cable, out-of-band management Ethernet patch cords, lockable front door, air filter panel
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 FEX devices for end-to-end consolidated LAN/SAN data center architecture
SDN compatibility: OpenFlow 1.3, NX-API REST/JSON APIs, Ansible/Puppet/Chef DevOps automation integration

3. Hardware Port & Slot Layout

Front Panel 48 SFP+ 1/10G Fiber Ports (24 Active Base)

48 × IEEE 802.3ae compliant multi-speed SFP+ 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 Algo Boost cut-through ASIC for sub-200ns ultra-low latency; only 24 ports are functional out of box, requiring a license key to activate all 48 physical ports.

Front Out-of-Band Management Interfaces

RS232 serial console port for local CLI configuration
1 × 10/100/1000BASE-T copper management port for remote SSH/SNMP/DCNM access
USB Type-A port for offline config/firmware file import/export
1-PPS RF timing synchronization port for financial trading low-latency clock alignment

Rear Panel Redundant FRU Slots

Dual hot-swappable AC power supply bays (factory pre-installed dual redundant PSUs, hot-swap capable without switch reboot)
Single hot-swappable 4+1 redundant fan tray assembly (hot-swap capable for maintenance without outage)

Front Panel LED Status Indicators

Global chassis health LED (green normal / amber critical fault)
Per-port dual-color link/activity LEDs for all 48 SFP+ fiber ports
Separate fault LEDs for each power supply and fan tray assembly
Remote-triggerable blue UID locator beacon LED for rack identification during maintenance windows

4. Hardware Performance Specifications

Total port capacity: 48 × 10G wire-speed ports (24 active base, upgradable to full 48)
Total switching fabric bandwidth: 480 Gbps non-blocking full-duplex
Wire-speed forwarding throughput: 360 Mpps at minimum 64-byte Ethernet frames (all ports operate full line-rate L2/L3 simultaneously)
Forwarding latency: Sub-200 nanosecond cut-through deterministic latency via Algo Boost ASIC (industry-leading for low-latency trading workloads)
Dynamic shared packet buffer: 6MB unified shared buffer pool (base model, smaller than 12MB X-series variant) to mitigate packet loss under moderate bursty virtualization and storage replication traffic
MAC address table capacity: 8,000 MAC entry storage (base scale)
IPv4 Unicast Routing Table: 16,000 LPM prefix entries maximum
VLAN scaling: Up to 4096 standard IEEE 802.1Q tagged VLANs
Jumbo frame MTU: Configurable up to 9216 bytes for storage replication and large-scale big-data workloads
Spanning tree scale: 64 MSTP instances, 512 RSTP instances
Port-channel scaling: Maximum 64 EtherChannels, up to 24 physical ports per LACP fabric port-channel / vPC trunk
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
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 basic BGP EVPN control plane for multi-tenant virtual machine mobility (no hardware tunnel offload vs X-series)
- 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-nanosecond time synchronization in financial co-location environments
- Standard SAN 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 × 442 mm × 467 mm (1.72 × 17.4 × 18.4 inches)
Integrated chassis weight (dual factory PSUs + fan tray, no transceivers): ~7.9 kg (17.4 lbs)
Fully loaded maximum weight (dual PSUs + fan tray + fully populated SFP+ transceivers): ~9.5 kg (20.9 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 (Factory Pre-Installed Dual Redundant NXA-PAC-500W)

AC input range: 100–240 VAC, 50/60 Hz, typical energy efficiency 89–91%
DC input range: -40 to -72 VDC negative telecom DC power supply (separate FRU airflow variant)
Typical full-system power consumption: 102W with all 24 active SFP+ ports fully populated; maximum peak power draw 265W
Hot-swappable OIR replacement capability; no full switch reboot required during live PSU hardware swap
MTBF: 330,000 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 ultra-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, 24-way ECMP multi-path load balancing
Multicast routing suite: IGMPv2/v3, PIM-SM, PIM-SSM, BiDir PIM for video streaming and inter-rack storage replication workloads
First-hop redundancy protocols: HSRP, VRRP for gateway failover redundancy
Hardware-accelerated IP ACLs (4096 ingress entries), route redistribution, prefix lists and route-map traffic segmentation policies
Standard-scale routing table capacity suitable for small-to-medium multi-tenant fabrics (expandable via X-series upgrade)
Software VXLAN bridging for virtual machine mobility (no hardware encapsulation offload compared to 10GX enhanced model)

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 with standard latency/buffer counters (limited vs X-series enhanced telemetry)

6. Typical Deployment Scenarios for N3K-C3524P-10G Integrated Chassis

Entry-level financial co-location low-latency trading ToR switch: Algo Boost sub-200ns cut-through latency eliminates PHY-induced latency variance for algorithmic trading workloads, factory pre-integrated dual redundant power and fan trays remove separate cooling/power FRU procurement overhead, default 24-port capacity matches small trading rack server density, upgradeable to full 48-port capacity as trading farm scales.
Small enterprise all-fiber leaf-spine data center leaf switch: 24 active 10G SFP+ ports serve low-density virtualization server racks connected via Nexus 2300 unified UPQ FEX devices, merging general LAN and lossless FCoE iSCSI storage traffic on a compact 1RU switch with non-blocking wire-rate performance, dual airflow FRU options support mixed cold/hot aisle rack layout rules.
Small HPC and big-data parallel compute cluster rack aggregation: Compact 1RU footprint saves valuable rack space for medium-density compute farms, optional 48-port license expansion doubles logical port density without new hardware purchases, DCB lossless Ethernet delivers zero-drop storage replication traffic for distributed compute workloads.
Small unified LAN/FCoE data center edge aggregation switch: 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 entry-level storage deployments with moderate routing scale requirements.
Standardized mass entry-level data center uniform fabric rollout: Factory pre-populated integrated power and cooling FRUs simplify spare part inventory management, dual airflow FRU compatibility supports flexible cold/hot aisle rack cooling design planning, cost-effective base 24-port default capacity reduces upfront capital expenditure for small fabric pods.

7. Standard Package Contents of N3K-C3524P-10G Integrated Factory SKU

1 × N3K-C3524P-10G Nexus 3524P 1RU base low-latency all-fiber leaf integrated switch chassis (factory pre-installed dual matching airflow AC power supplies + redundant 4+1 fan tray assembly; no SFP+ optical transceivers included)

19-inch rack mounting rails, front cable management brackets

Hardware extraction handle, locking latch, hardware installation guide, global safety & regulatory compliance documentation

Separately Mandatory Components (Not Included in This Bundle)

SFP+ transceivers for active SFP+ fabric ports: 1G/10G SR/LR/ER optical transceivers, Twinax/AOC fiber DAC cables
Optional upgrade license N3K-LIC-3524-48 to unlock all 48 physical SFP+ ports from default 24 active 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

Cisco N3K-C3524P-10G is an End-of-Sale factory integrated low-power 1RU ultra-low-latency cut-through all-fiber Top-of-Rack (ToR) data center switch from the Cisco Nexus 3500 Algo Boost low-latency switching platform, featuring 48 physical 1/10G SFP+ fiber ports (24 active ports out of box, licensable upgrade to full 48-port capacity), a fixed non-blocking 480Gbps switching fabric, 6MB unified dynamic shared packet buffer and standard base memory ASIC architecture optimized for entry-level low-latency financial algorithmic trading, small HPC compute clusters and cost-sensitive entry leaf-spine data center fabrics supporting lossless DCB FCoE unified storage transport. Distinguished from enhanced X-series N3K-C3524P-10GX by its smaller base buffer, limited standard telemetry and 2GB basic Logflash storage, this integrated chassis ships factory pre-equipped with dual hot-swappable redundant AC power supplies and 4+1 redundant fan tray assembly, with customer-selectable port-intake (PI) or port-exhaust (PE) airflow hardware to align with standardized cold/hot aisle rack cooling infrastructure requirements. This fixed integrated chassis includes factory pre-installed power and cooling FRUs, eliminating separate spare part procurement overhead; all Layer 2 switching, security, QoS and FCoE storage convergence policies are fully configured, monitored and enforced centrally on upstream Cisco Nexus parent aggregation switches running modular NX-OS. It delivers line-rate native Layer 2 switching, optional licensed full Layer 3 routing, software-supported VXLAN multi-tenant virtualization, POAP zero-touch provisioning, synchronized bulk fleet firmware upgrades and complete vPC high-availability fabric topologies. Limitations require separate optical transceiver procurement for fiber connectivity, software-only VXLAN without hardware tunnel offload compared to later V-series integrated switches, smaller base buffer and memory limiting maximum traffic burst and routing table scale, fixed 1RU rack form factor, expired official Cisco hardware support lifecycle, and restricted Layer 3 routing functionality without additional base software license. Compliant with global safety, EMI, NEBS Level 3 and RoHS 6 industrial standards.


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