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Powerful new Cisco Nexus 7000 in Action at Sentinel's Staging and Integration Lab!
Sentinel Technologies is one of the first integrators in the Midwest to have the opportunity to take an extended look at one of Cisco’s newest Data Center switches, the Nexus 7000. The unit has been in Sentinel’s lab for the past 60 days and many of Sentinel’s top technical engineers have benefited from hands-on training on this powerful new addition to Cisco’s switching family. For a closer look at the Nexus 7000, read on.
Sleek Design
 
First, here are two views of the front of the Nexus 7000.
On the left, the cable tray and module protection panels are in the closed position and then on the right, they are opened up. The optional air filter is shown on the bottom. Who would ever want dirty air running into this beautiful system?
Migrating from Cisco 6500’s
One of Sentinel’s engineers stated, “Coming from a Cisco 6500 background, the transition to the Nexus took little time to understand. Cisco has done an awesome job creating the NX-OS with some similarity to the Cisco IOS software line. It has little perks like ISSU, configuration rollback, and CMP (similar to HP Lights Out), which makes the Nexus a very well engineered device.”
Super Speed, Super Power, Super Reliability
Shown here are the 2 Supervisor modules in the middle and the 32 port 10G card on the left. There are 4 slots for line card modules on each side of the Supervisors, scaling up to a whopping 256 10Gbps Ethernet ports. Though not shown here, populating the chassis with 48 port 10/100/1000 cards would get up to 384 1Gbps ports. The Nexus is designed for scalability of more than 15 Terabits per second!!
Sentinel technical engineers also commented “The best thing about the Nexus is the Zero Service Loss Architecture. With the combination of ISSU, redundant supervisors, and NSF (NonStop Forwarding), we experienced no packet loss during the IOS upgrade process. With its architecture, you can easily achieve the five 9’s of network availability.”
At the bottom rear you can see the redundant hot-swappable load-sharing power supplies. Each one has dual AC connections. You can put in 3 power supplies (3rd slot is empty in this picture) giving 1 x N redundancy. The snap in AC cables and sturdy, balanced handles make it a breeze for removal/insertion!
Also visible is one of the 5 fabric module (FM) slots just above the power supplies. Up to 5 simultaneously active fabric modules work together delivering up to 230 Gbps per slot.
Cable Management Design
A closer look at the cable management system at the top reveals how cables are funneled from the modules below to each side of the switch, making access to the modules easier for maintenance and reducing cable clutter in and out of each module.
Rave Reviews
Overall, the Cisco Nexus 7000 has received outstanding reviews from our experienced panel of engineers. This new addition to the Cisco family of switching products has a very bright future!
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