Cisco Nexus 3164Q Switch Data Sheet

Product Overview

The Cisco Nexus^® 3164Q Switch is an ultra-high density, power efficient, 10/40-Gbps switch designed for the data center. This compact, two-rack-unit (2RU) model offers wire-rate Layer 2 and Layer 3 switching on all ports. It runs the enhanced version of the Cisco^® NX-OS Software operating system, that also supports Nexus 9000 series switches. It provides customer comprehensive features while simplifying image management. The rich programmability features enable organizations to run today’s applications while also being prepared for the demanding and changing application needs such as big data, cloud, and virtualization.

The Cisco Nexus 3164Q (Figure 1) is a 40-Gbps Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable (QSFP)-based switch with 64 Enhanced QSFP (QSFP+) ports. Each QSFP+ port can operate in native 40-Gbps or 4 x 10-Gbps mode, up to a maximum of 256 10G ports^[1].

Main Benefits

The Cisco Nexus 3164Q provides the following:

●   Wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching on all ports^[2] up to 5.12 terabits per second (Tbps) and up to 3.8 billion packets per second (bpps).

●   Rich Programmability, with support for NX-API, Linux Containers, XML/JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) APIs, Openstack plugin, Python, and Puppet/Chef configuration and automation tools.

●   High Performance and Scalability with 6 core CPU, 16GE DRAM and 64 GB SSD, with 48 Mbytes of dynamic buffer allocation. Ideal for massively scalable data centers and big data applications.

●   Flexibility

◦     The QSFP port can be configured to work as four 10-Gbps ports, offering deployment flexibility, up to a maximum of 256 10G ports.

◦     The Cisco^® Quad Small Form-Factor (QSFP) 40-Gbps Bidirectional (BiDi) Transceiver technology allows the reuse of existing 10G cablings, a smooth transition from 10 to 40 Gigabit Ethernet infrastructures in data centers.

◦     Both fiber and copper cabling solutions for both 10-Gbps and 40-Gbps, with the SFP options of Bidi, AOC, SR4 fiber optics.

●   High availability

◦     Virtual PortChannel (vPC) technology provides Layer 2 multipathing 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 allows organizations to prevent network bottlenecks, increase resiliency, and add capacity with little network disruption.

◦     Advanced reboot capabilities include hot/cold pathching and Fast Reboot capabilities.

◦     Hot swappable power-supply units (PSUs) and fans.

●   Purpose-built Cisco NX-OS operating system with comprehensive, proven innovations

◦     PowerOn Auto Provisioning (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.

◦     EtherAnalyzer 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).

Configuration

The Cisco Nexus 3164Q has the following configuration:

●   64 fixed 40 Gigabit Ethernet QSFP+ ports

●   Locator LED

●   Environment LED

●   Status LED

●   Dual redundant power supplies

●   Redundant (3+1) fans

●   Lane selected LED

●   One 10/100/1000-Mbps management port

●   One RS-232 serial console port

●   Two USB ports

Transceiver and Cabling Options

The Cisco Nexus 3164Q has 64 QSFP+ ports. QSFP+ technology allows a smooth transition from 10 to 40 Gigabit Ethernet infrastructures in data centers. Each of the Cisco Nexus 3164Q switch’s QSFP+ ports can operate in either native 40 Gigabit Ethernet mode or 4 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet mode. This switch supports both fiber and copper cabling solutions for these two modes.

For low-cost cabling, copper-based 40-Gbps Twinax cables can be used, and for longer cable reaches, short-reach optical transceivers are excellent. Connectivity can be established from the QSFP+ ports to 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches or hosts using a splitter cable that has a QSFP+ transceiver on one end and four SFP+ transceivers on the other end. Similar capability can be achieved on the fiber solution by using QSFP+ SR4 transceivers on both ends and procuring third-party fiber splitter MPO-to-LC cables. Table 1 lists the QSFP transceiver types supported.