Cisco IOM Product Overview
Cisco UCS 2200 Series Fabric Extenders, shown in Figure 16-9, bring the unified fabric into the blade server enclosure, providing multiple 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections between blade servers and the Fabric Interconnect, simplifying diagnostics, cabling, and management. This series is a second-generation I/O module (IOM) that shares the same form factor as the IOM of the first-generation Cisco UCS 2100 Series Fabric Extenders, and it is backward-compatible with the shipping Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis.
Figure 16-9 Cisco UCS 2200/2300/2400 Fabric Extenders
Cisco UCS 2200 Series extends the I/O fabric between Cisco UCS 6200 Series Fabric Interconnects and the Cisco UCS 5100 Series blade server chassis, enabling a lossless and deterministic FCoE fabric to connect all blades and chassis. Because the Fabric Extender is similar to a distributed line card, it does not perform switching and is managed as an extension of the Fabric Interconnects. This approach removes switching from the chassis, reducing overall infrastructure complexity and enabling Cisco UCS to scale to many chassis without multiplying the number of switches needed, reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) and allowing all chassis to be managed as a single, highly available management domain.
Cisco UCS 2200 Series also manages the chassis environment (the power supply, fans, and blades) along with the Fabric Interconnect. Therefore, separate chassis management modules are not required. Cisco UCS 2200 Series Fabric Extenders fit into the back of the Cisco UCS 5100 Series chassis. Each Cisco UCS 5100 Series chassis can support up to two Fabric Extenders, allowing increased capacity and redundancy.
The Cisco UCS 2204XP Fabric Extender has four 10-Gigabit Ethernet, FCoE-capable, SFP+ ports that connect the blade chassis to the Fabric Interconnect. Each Cisco UCS 2204XP has 16 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports connected through the midplane to each half-width slot in the chassis. Typically configured in pairs for redundancy, two Fabric Extenders provide up to 80-Gbps of I/O to the chassis.
The Cisco UCS 2208XP Fabric Extender has eight 10-Gigabit Ethernet, FCoE-capable, Enhanced Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP+) ports that connect the blade chassis to the Fabric Interconnect. Each Cisco UCS 2208XP has 32 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports connected through the midplane to each half-width slot in the chassis. Typically configured in pairs for redundancy, two Fabric Extenders provide up to 160-Gbps of I/O to the chassis.
The Cisco UCS 2304 Fabric Extender has four 40-Gigabit Ethernet, FCoE-capable, Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable (QSFP+) ports that connect the blade chassis to the Fabric Interconnect. Each Cisco UCS 2304 can provide one 40-Gigabit Ethernet port connected through the midplane to each half-width slot in the chassis, giving it a total eight 40G interfaces to the compute. Typically configured in pairs for redundancy, two Fabric Extenders provide up to 320-Gbps of I/O to the chassis. The Cisco UCS 2408 Fabric Extender has eight 25-Gigabit Ethernet, FCoE-capable, Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP28) ports that connect the blade chassis to the Fabric Interconnect. Each Cisco UCS 2408 provides 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports connected through the midplane to each half-width slot in the chassis, giving it a total 32 10G interfaces to UCS blades. Typically configured in pairs for redundancy, two Fabric Extenders provide up to 400Gbps of I/O from FI 6400 series to 5108 chassis.