0a7c837.shtml. Installing VSS CHAPTER 18 Cisco Nexus At the time of this writing, the Cisco Nexus product line is composed of four levels of devices: 7000, 5000, 2000, and 1000, though the 1000-level is usually a server appliance (1010) or a virtual switch (1000v). I will concentrate mostly on the hardware devices 7000-2000 in this chapter. As with most Cisco products, Nexus devices named with a larger number are larger and more powerful. One of the selling points for the Nexus platform is something called unified fabric. Unified fabric provides the ability to combine traditional networking with storage net- working in a single connector. This can be a pretty big deal, since we could have a pair of Nexus 7000s instead of a pair of Catalyst 6500s and a pair of MDS 9000 fabric switches in a data center. This chapter will focus on the networking aspect of Nexus switches, and will largely ignore storage. Though I'm sure there are companies out there eagerly pursuing this idea, in the few years that I've been working with Nexus, I've yet to see it in action. So far, I've built three large-scale data centers, and we worked with Cisco to understand FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet), but we just couldn't get buy- in from the executives. Nexus switches use NX-OS as their operating system. NX-OS was designed from its roots in MDS storage devices, but looks and feels mostly like IOS. I say "mostly" be- cause there are subtle differences that will baffle you as you learn it. This book is filled with such examples, SO have fun while you learn and see if you can find them all. Nexus Hardware Nexus networking devices come in three flavors; 7000, 5000, and 2000. The 7000 series are large chassis switches similar in purpose to the 6500 Catalysts (and MDS-9000 storage switches). The 5000 is a top-of-rack solution with 10 Gb interfaces in abun- dance. The 2000 FEXs are designed to be extensions to the 7000 and 5000 switches. Nexus 7000 other Nexus Cisco 7000s chassis are currently available in two models: the 7010 and the chassis.