Colin McNamara – CCIE 18233 , VCP, EMCIE, NCDA, GEEK

Cisco released an addition to their Nexus series data center switching line, the Nexus 5020. The Nexus 5020 packs 1.04 terrabit of switching capacity into a 2 ru top of rack chassis. Inside this chassis you have 40 10 Gig Ethernet ports, as well as modular slots that can accept 12 extra 10 Gig ports, or 8 port Fibre Channel cards for a total of 56 available ports

This switch answers a fundamental problem that has been presented by blade centers and VMware. The problem is increasing density of 10 Gig Ethernet, as well as the creation of SAN islands to provide storage access to VMware ESX clusters.  The nexus 5020 provides a solution that address both of these challenges, as well as supporting Fibre Channel Over Ethernet (FCOE) for the eventual move to a consolidated data center fabric in the years to come.

Want to learn more ?

Mastering VMware Infrastructure

Nexus 5020 Video Data Sheet

Unified Data Center Fabric whitepaper

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