Introduction to Cisco's Nexus Switches

While Juniper pieces their MX-Series and EX-Series together to provide a data center solution,  Arista Networks designed their EOS switches from scratch purposely for data center and cloud computing, Force10 networks and Brocade Networks are warming up  on data center switch markets,  as the leader in Ethernet switch market,  Cisco already had a end-to-end and market-proven data center solution using their specially engineered Nexus series switches.
There are numerous innovations and new technologies in Cisco Nexus series switch, such as DCB, FCOE, Nexus OS, FabricPath, FEX and Nexus 1000V. One article is necessary to analyze those technologies. Here
is a list of Nexus series switches. You could see its portfolio is the richest in industry.

1.  Cisco Nexus 1000V (Inside Server)
• VM-aware software switch
• Provides Cisco VN-Link VM network services
• Work seamlessly with VMware vSphere 
2. Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders (Access Layer)
• 1 RU
• 48 1000Base-T ports , 4 SFP+ 10GbE uplinks or 
• 24 100/1000Base-T ports, 2 10GbE SFP+ uplinks or
• 48 100/1000Base-T ports, 4 10GbE SFP+ uplinks or
• 32 1/10Gb SFP+  Ethernet/FCoE ports, 8 10Gb Ethernet/FCoE uplinks
• 1+1 Fan Trays
• 1+1 Power Supplies
• vPCs, FCOE
• Parent switch could be either Nexus 5000 or Nexus 7000
3. Cisco Nexus 5000 Series ( Access Layer)
• 1 or 2 RU
• 32 1/10Gbps SFP+ Etherne /FCoE fixed ports, with expansion 
• 16 10Gbps SFP+; Ethernet/FCoE;
• 8 10Gbps SFP+/FCoE and; 8 1/2/4/8Gbps Fibre Channel ports
• 20 10Gbps SFP+ Ethernet/FCoE fixed ports,with expansion
• 8 1/2/4Gbps Fibre Channel ports
• 6 1/2/4/8Gbps Fibre Channel ports
•  410Gbps DCB/FCoE Ethernet and 4 1/2/4/Gbps Fibre Channel ports
•  610Gbps DCB/FCoE Ethernet
• 40 10Gbps SFP+ DCB/FCoE Ethernet fixed ports,with 2 expansions
• 8 1/2/4Gbps Fibre Channel ports
• 6 1/2/4/8Gbps Fibre Channel ports
•  410Gbps DCB/FCoE Ethernet and 4 1/2/4/Gbps Fibre Channel ports
•  610Gbps DCB/FCoE Ethernet
• 1+1 Fan Trays
• 1+1 Power Supplies
• 1 or 2 expansion modules
• vPCs, DCB, FCoE and Fibre Channel
• Parent switch could be Nexus 7000
4. Cisco Nexus 7000 Series (Core Layer)
•  10 or 18 slot chassis
•  8 or 16 I/O modules
• 32 10GbE I/O module
• 48 GbE I/O modules
• 32 1/10GbE I/O Module or
• 8 10GbE I/O modules
• 5 Fabric Modules
• 1+1 Supervisor Module
• 1+1 System Fan Trays
• 1+1 Power Supplies
• vPCs, VDC,