The Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z is the 32-port 100-Gbps programmable architecture switch, enabled with major data center features designed for software-defined data centers. This 1-Rack-Unit (1RU) model offers wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching.
The Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z (Figure 1) is a Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable (QSFP) switch with 32 QSFP28 ports. Each QSFP28 port can operate at 10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 Gbps, up to a maximum of 128 x 25-Gbps ports.
It is a member of the Cisco Nexus 3100 platform and runs the industry-leading Cisco NX-OS Software operating system, providing customers with comprehensive features and functions that are widely deployed. The Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z supports both forward and reverse (port-side exhaust and port-side intake) airflow schemes with AC and DC power inputs.
Main benefits
The Cisco Nexus 3132C-Z provides the following:
● Data center feature richness that supports full IPv4 and IPv6 routing; Virtual Extensible LAN (VxLAN); and hardware-based encapsulation, including Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS), Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE), and Q-in-Q tunneling
● Wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching on all ports,2 with up to 6.4 Terabits per second (Tbps) and up to 2 billion packets per second (bpps)
● Robust programmability, with support for Cisco NX-API, Linux containers, XML and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) APIs, the OpenStack plug-in, Python, and Puppet and Chef configuration and automation tools
● High performance and scalability with a four-core CPU, 16 GB of DRAM, and 32 Mb of dynamic buffer allocation, making the switch excellent for massively scalable data centers and big data application
● Flexibility
◦ The QSFP28 port can be configured to work as 4 x 25-Gbps ports, offering deployment flexibility, with up to a maximum of 128 x 25-Gbps ports.
◦ Both fiber and copper cabling solutions are available for 10-, 25-, 40-, 50-, and 100-Gbps connectivity, including Active Optical Cable (AOC) and Direct-Attached Cable (DAC).
● High availability
◦ Virtual Port Channel (vPC) technology provides Layer 2 multipath through the elimination of Spanning Tree Protocol. It also enables fully utilized bisectional bandwidth and simplified Layer 2 logical topologies without the need to change the existing management and deployment models.
◦ The 64-way Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP) routing enables the use of Layer 3 fat-tree designs. This feature allows organizations to prevent network bottlenecks, increase resiliency, and add capacity with little network disruption.
◦ Advanced reboot capabilities include hot and cold patching and fast reboot capabilities.
◦ The switch uses hot-swappable Power-Supply Units (PSUs) and fans.
● Purpose-built NX-OS operating system with comprehensive, proven innovations
◦ Power-on Autoprovisioning (POAP) enables touchless bootup and configuration of the switch, drastically reducing provisioning time.
◦ Cisco Embedded Event Manager (EEM) and Python scripting enable automation and remote operations in the data center.
◦ Advanced buffer monitoring reports real-time buffer utilization per port and per queue, which allows organizations to monitor traffic bursts and application traffic patterns.
◦ Ethanalyzer is a built-in packet analyzer for monitoring and troubleshooting control-plane traffic and is based on the popular Wireshark open-source network protocol analyzer.
◦ Complete Layer 3 unicast and multicast routing protocol suites are supported, including Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Routing Information Protocol Version 2 (RIPv2), Protocol Independent Multicast Sparse Mode (PIM-SM), Source-Specific Multicast (SSM), and Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP).
