A data center switch is a device that connects computing devices in a data center so that they can communicate with each other. Switches are used to create redundancy and improve network performance.

A data center switch typically has multiple ports, which can be used to connect to various types of devices. The most common type of data center switch is the Ethernet switch, which is used to connect computers and other devices that use Ethernet cables.

How to Choose the Right Data Center Switch?

A data center switch is a multi-port network switch that is specifically designed for use in a data center. They are typically used to connect servers and storage devices to each other, as well as to connect the data center to the outside world.

There are many different types of data center switches available on the market today, so it can be difficult to choose the right one for your needs. Here are a few things to keep in mind when choosing a data center switch:

1. Make sure that the switch supports the required number of ports.

2. Choose a switch with redundant power supplies for added reliability.

3. Select a switch that offers features such as port monitoring and VLAN support.

4. Consider the overall cost of ownership when making your decision.

Cisco Nexus 93108TC-FX3P: An overview

The Cisco Nexus 93108TC-FX3P Switch is a multigigabit-capable fixed switch, which was built with Cisco Cloud Scale technology. It’s part of the Cisco Nexus 9300 platform. Cisco Multigigabit Ethernet technology supports bandwidth speeds from 100Mbps to 10 Gbps over traditional Category 5e/6 cabling.

Current cabling infrastructure can’t meet the bandwidth needs driven by 802,11ac Wave 2 and Wi-Fi 6. To solve this, engineers created a new method of transmitting data packets using optics, which eliminates the need for replacing the current infrastructure. The switch is built on a modern-system architecture designed to provide high performance, support cost-effective deployments, and meet the evolving needs of growing mid-size to large enterprise customers.

Cisco provides two modes of operation for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches. Organizations can deploy Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) or Cisco NX-OS mode. Cisco ACI is a holistic, intent-driven architecture with centralized automation and policy-based application profiles.

The system is designed to manage dynamic workloads, so it can serve and balance traffic as needed. Additionally, it offers a network fabric that combines time-tested protocols and new innovations to create extremely flexible, scalable, and resilient architecture with low latency and high bandwidth links.

This fabric delivers a network that can support the most demanding and flexible data center environments. Designed for the programmable network, the Cisco NX-OS operating system automates configuration and management for customers who want to take advantage of the DevOps operation model and toolsets.

Take advantage of the Cisco Nexus 93108TC-FX3P’s optimized efficiency, simplified operation, and installation combined with its wide array of device versatility to protect your investments as your business becomes more data-centric and interconnected.The expansive feature set includes 40MB of intelligent buffering, support for voice VLANs, and a full-featured Layer 2 and Layer 3 Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC).

The Features of the Cisco Nexus 9372PX

The Cisco Nexus 9300-FX3 series switches provide the following features and benefits:

Architectural flexibility

• Industry-leading software-defined networking (SDN) solution Cisco ACI support
• Support for standards-based VXLAN EVPN fabrics, inclusive of hierarchical multisite support 
• Three-tier BGP architectures enabling horizontal, nonblocking IPv6 network fabrics at web-scale
• Segment routing allows the network to forward Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) packets and engineer traffic without Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) Traffic Engineering (TE). It provides a control-plane alternative for increased network scalability and virtualization.
• Comprehensive protocol support for Layer 3 (v4/v6) unicast and multicast routing protocol suites, including 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).

Extensive programmability

• Day-0 automation through Power On Auto Provisioning, drastically reducing provisioning time
• Industry-leading integrations for leading DevOps configuration management applications, including Ansible, Chef, Puppet, SALT, Extensive Native YANG, and industry-standard OpenConfig model support through RESTCONF/NETCONF
• Pervasive APIs for all switch CLI functions (JSON-based RPC over HTTP/HTTPS)

High scalability, flexibility, and security

• Flexible forwarding tables support up to two million shared entries on FX3 models. Flexible use of TCAM space allows for the custom definition of Access Control List (ACL) templates.
• MAC Security (MACsec) and CloudSec (VTEP-to-VTEP encryption) support on all ports of Cisco Nexus 9300-FX3 models with speeds greater than or equal to 1 Gbps, which allows traffic encryption at the physical layer and provides secure server, border-leaf, and leaf-to-spine connectivity

Intelligent buffer management

The platform offers Cisco’s innovative intelligent buffer management, which offers the capability to distinguish mice and elephant flows and apply different queue management schemes to them based on their network forwarding requirements in the event of link congestion.

Intelligent buffer management functions are:

• Approximate Fair Dropping (AFD) with Elephant Trap (ETRAP). AFD uses ETRAP to distinguish long-lived elephant flows from short-lived mice flows. AFD exempts mice flows from the dropping algorithm so that mice flows will get their fair share of bandwidth without being starved by bandwidth-hungry elephant flows. Also, AFD tracks elephant flows and subjects them to the AFD algorithm in the egress queue to grant them their fair share of bandwidth.
• ETRAP measures the byte counts of incoming flows and compares this against the user-defined ETRAP threshold. After a flow crosses the threshold, it becomes an elephant flow.
• Dynamic Packet Prioritization (DPP), provides the capability of separating mice flows and elephant flows into two different queues so that buffer space can be allocated to them independently. Mice flow that is sensitive to congestion and latency can take priority in the queue and avoid reordering, allowing elephant flows to take full link bandwidth.

RDMA over Converged Ethernet – RoCE support

The platform offers lossless transport for RDMA over Converged Ethernet with support of DCB protocols:

• Priority-based Flow Control (PFC) — to prevent drops in the network and pause frame propagation per priority class
• Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS) — to reserve bandwidth per priority class in a network contention situation
• Data Center Bridging Exchange Protocol (DCBX) — to discover and exchange priority and bandwidth information with endpoints
• The platform also supports Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN), which provides end-to-end notification per IP flow by marking packets that experienced congestion, without dropping traffic. The platform is capable of tracking ECN statistics of the number of marked packets that have experienced congestion.

Hardware and software high availability

• Virtual Port-Channel (vPC) technology provides Layer 2 multipathing through the elimination of the 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 model.
• The 64-way Equal-Cost MultiPath (ECMP) routing enables the use of Layer 3 fat-tree designs. This feature helps organizations prevent network bottlenecks, increase resiliency, and add capacity with little network disruption.
• Advanced reboot capabilities include hot and cold patching
• The switch uses hot-swappable Power-Supply Units (PSUs) and fans with N+1 redundancy.

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

A single binary image that supports every switch in the Cisco Nexus 9000 series, simplifying image management. The operating system is modular, with a dedicated process for each routing protocol: a design that isolates faults while increasing availability. In the event of a process failure, the process can be restarted without loss of state. The operating system supports hot and cold patching and online diagnostics.

Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) is the network management platform for all NX-OS-enabled deployments, spanning new fabric architectures, IP Fabric for Media, and storage networking deployments for the Cisco Nexus-powered data center. Accelerate provisioning from days to minutes, and simplify deployments from day 0 through day N. Reduce troubleshooting cycles with graphical operational visibility for topology, network fabric, and infrastructure. Eliminate configuration errors and automate ongoing change in a closed loop, with a templated deployment model and configuration compliance alerting with automatic remediation. Real-time health summary for fabric, devices, and topology. Correlated visibility for fabric (underlay, overlay, virtual, and physical endpoints), including computing visualization with VMware.

Network traffic monitoring with Cisco Nexus Data Broker builds simple, scalable, and cost-effective network test access points (TAPs) and Cisco Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) aggregation for network traffic monitoring and analysis.

Conclusion

The Cisco Nexus 9372PX is the perfect data center switch for those who need high performance and scalability. It offers a comprehensive feature set, including support for virtualization, making it an ideal choice for businesses of all sizes. Thanks to its easy-to-use interface, the 9372PX is also perfect for those who are new to data center networking. If you’re looking for a top-of-the-line data center switch, the Cisco Nexus 9372PX is the perfect option.