The Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series 2-Port 100 Gigabit Ethernet Module with XL Option (referred to here as the Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series module) is a highly scalable, high-performance module offering outstanding flexibility and full-featured, non-blocking 100 Gigabit Ethernet performance on each port. The Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series module (Figure 1) facilitates the deployment of high-density, high-bandwidth, scalable network architecture, especially in large network cores and in service provider and Internet peering environments.
The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches provide the foundation of the Cisco® Unified Fabric. They are a modular data center-class product line designed for highly scalable 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks. The fabric architecture scales beyond 15 terabits per second (Tbps), and is designed to support high-density 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet deployments. To meet the requirements of the most mission-critical network environments, the switches deliver continuous system operations and virtualized services. The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series is powered by the proven Cisco NX-OS Software operating system, with enhanced features to deliver real-time system upgrades with exceptional manageability and serviceability. The software’s innovative unified fabric design is purpose-built to support consolidation of IP and storage networks on a single lossless Ethernet fabric.
The Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series module contains two integrated forwarding engines capable of delivering up to 120 million packets per second (Mpps) of Layer 2 and Layer 3 IPv4 unicast forwarding or 60 Mpps of IPv6 unicast forwarding across all ports of a single I/O module. The distributed architecture, with the forwarding engine integrated into each module, scales the forwarding performance of the chassis linearly by the number of I/O modules employed. The 18-slot chassis with 16 Cisco Nexus 7000 M2 Series modules can deliver up to 1.92 billion packets per second (Bpps) of IPv4 unicast forwarding or 960 million packets per second (Mpps) of IPv6 unicast forwarding. Multicast forwarding is built into the I/O module, performing egress replication. The integrated forwarding engines also deliver ACL filtering, marking, rate limiting, and NetFlow with no effect on performance. Powerful ACL processing supports up to 128K entries per module, where entries can address Layer 2, 3, and 4 fields in addition to the Cisco metadata fields that employ Security Group Tags (SGTs).
The Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series 2-Port 100 Gigabit Ethernet Module with XL Option offers exceptional security with integrated hardware support for Cisco TrustSec® technology, including line-rate data confidentiality, data integrity, and ACL processing for SGTs. Data confidentiality and integrity conform to the IEEE MAC security standard (IEEE 802.1AE [MACsec]). Both ports on the module support the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) cipher, using a 128-bit key. New security ACLs are enhanced through hardware support for Cisco metadata headers capable of carrying SGTs. Security group ACLs (SGACLs) use SGT information to provide hardware- based enforcement of security policies, removing dependencies on IP addresses, and thus improving scalability and simplifying manageability.
The Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series module buffers data in Virtual Output Queues (VOQ) before the data flows to the fabric. The data flow is controlled by a central arbiter on the supervisor module, using a credit-based buffer design. This architecture offers a lossless fabric that delivers quality of service (QoS) and fairness across all ports, even during congestion.
The comprehensive feature set of the Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series module includes Layer 2 and Layer 3 forwarding, with the robust feature set offered by Cisco NX-OS Software: a modular multitasking and multithreaded operating system built with high availability, granular fault management, resiliency, and nondisruptive serviceability at its foundation. This extremely comprehensive set of Layer 2 and Layer 3 functions makes this module ideal for data center networks, where density, performance, and continuous system operation are critical.
● Supported on Cisco Nexus 7000 4-, 9- 10-, and 18-Slot Switch chassis
● Supported Fabric-1 or Fabric-2 fabric modules
● Supported SUP1, SUP2 or SUP2E Supervisor modules
Software compatibility
Cisco NX-OS Software Release 6.1 or later (minimum requirement)
Memory
2 GB DRAM
Front-panel LEDs
● Status: Green (operational), red (faulty), or orange (module booting)
● Link: Green (port enabled and connected), orange (port disabled), blinking orange (faulty port), off (port enabled and not connected), or blinking green and orange in conjunction with ID LED blue (port flagged for identification; beacon)
● ID: Blue (operator has flagged this card for identification; beacon) or off (module not flagged)
