Network Admins like to have all the servers connect to one or two main switches, while Server Admins like to have their servers connect to switches at the top of the rack. With traditional Ethernet switches, there are disadvantages to both architectures. Traditional End of Row (or Middle of Row) switching design creates monstrous patch cable tangles, while traditional Top of Rack switching leads to reliability and bandwidth issues. The ideal would be to have one or two switches that can be centrally managed, yet have extensions at the top of each rack for easy server connection.
The Nexus switches have a unique design where remote Fabric Extenders act as remote shelves of the redundant core switches. Each Nexus 2000 Fabric Extender is controlled through multiple 10G copper or fiber uplinks by one Nexus 5000 or 7000 switch, with all management and switching decisions done by the parent switch. Each Fabric Extender can also have a secondary parent, creating reliability though redundancy. A typical deployment would have dual Nexus 2000 FE’s at the top of the rack for servers to dual-home connect to, and would have multiple uplinks to the Middle of Row or End of Row Nexus 5000 or 7000’s. This design creates a high speed and reliable core switching system with straightforward patch cable layouts.
