Cisco Nexus - Switch Fabric Module

What is a switch fabric module?

Fabric module connects the supervisor engine and line cards of the switch

Fabric Module Types

Fabric Module - 1 - Generation 1 (provides 46 Gbps of backplane capacity)
Fabric Module - 2 - Generation 2 (provides 110 Gbps of backplane capacity)
Fabric Module - 3 - Generation 3 (provides 2.8 Tbps of backplane capacity)

What do the above numbers indicate?

The original M1 series I/O modules eg. N7K-M132XP-12 have 80 Gbps of capacity per slot. So, two Generation 1 fabric modules would be required (2*46Gbps = 92 Gbps) for providing sufficient fabric capacity for the M1 series 10GE line card. Ordinarily, Cisco would recommend using 3 fabric modules in this case, for redundancy purposes, since one fabric module going down would translate to reduced capacity / backplane in the production environment. This implies, the overall fabric module capacity should exceed the line card capacity.

Hardware specific details

Nexus 7004 has no fabric modules
Nexus 7000 series supports 5 fabric modules
Nexus 7700 series supports 6 fabric modules

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