Bias-Free Language

The documentation set for this product strives to use bias-free language. For the purposes of this documentation set, bias-free is defined as language that does not imply discrimination based on age, disability, gender, racial identity, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. Exceptions may be present in the documentation due to language that is hardcoded in the user interfaces of the product software, language used based on RFP documentation, or language that is used by a referenced third-party product. Learn more about how Cisco is using Inclusive Language.

Cisco Nexus 3400-S overview

The Cisco Nexus® 3400-S is the first 400G capable switch in the Nexus 3000 portfolio with 50 Gbps PAM4 Serial-Deserializers (SerDes), designed for data centers with industry-leading performance-per-watt power efficiency at low latency, offering leading analytics.

Main benefits of the Cisco Nexus 3400-S switches:

● With the 12.8-Tbps ASIC, the Cisco Nexus 3408-S series provides 128 ports of 100G or 32 ports of 400G, allowing customers to grow at scale with fewer numbers of switches in their fabric, simplifying management and reducing cost and number of hops.

● At 400G, the Cisco Nexus 3400-S offers the lowest latency in the industry at high power efficiency.

● The Cisco Nexus 3400-S offers a programmable pipeline translated to flexible profiles, whether Longest-Prefix-Matching (LPM)-optimized or layer 3 host-optimized. Customers can choose the profile to match their deployment needs.

● Cisco Nexus 3400-S switches enable deep network analytics, offering per flow monitoring, queue forensics, and drop-packet forensics to help monitor customer networks.

The Cisco Nexus 3408-S (Figure 1) is a 4-Rack-Unit (RU), 8-slot chassis with the flexibility of 100G or 400G Line-Card Expansion Modules (LEMs) offering 128 ports of 100G or 32 ports of 400G. The Cisco Nexus 3408-S is the industry’s highest port radix in a compact and energy-efficient form factor. The Cisco Nexus 3408-S supports HVAC/DC power inputs with forward airflow direction.

Figure 1.

Cisco Nexus 3408-S

The Cisco Nexus 3408-S has the following hardware configuration:

● 4RU, 8-slot chassis

● NXM-X16C LEM with 16 ports of Quad-Small-Form-Factor 28 (QSFP28)

● NXM-X4D LEM with 4 ports of Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable – Double Density (QSFP-DD)

● Beacon LED

● Status LED

● Dual-redundant power supplies

● Redundant (2+1) fans

● One RS-232 console port

● One RJ45 and one SFP Management port

● One USB port

Figure 2.

Cisco Nexus NXM-X16C, 16 Ports of 100G

The 100G LEMs are 16 ports of QSFP28 supporting 100G native speed and 50, 40, 25, 10G breakout speeds.

The 400G LEMs are 4 ports of QSFP-DD that are backward-compatible with QSFP+, QSFP28, and QSFP56. Each QSFP-DD port can operate at 400, 200, 100, 40 native speeds and 200, 100, 50, 25, 10 Gbps breakout.

Cisco NX-OS software overview

Cisco NX-OS is a data center-class operating system built with modularity, resiliency, and serviceability at its foundation. Cisco NX-OS helps ensure continuous availability and sets the standard for mission-critical data center environments. The self-healing and highly modular design of Cisco NX-OS makes zero-impact operations a reality and provides exceptional operational flexibility.

Focused on the requirements of the data center, Cisco NX-OS provides a robust and comprehensive feature set that meets the networking requirements of present and future data centers. With an XML interface and a Command-Line Interface (CLI) like that of Cisco IOS ^® Software, Cisco NX-OS provides state-of-the-art implementations of relevant networking standards as well as a variety of true data-center-class Cisco innovations.

The Cisco Nexus 3400-S provides:

Wire-rate layer 2 and 3 switching on all ports, with up to 25.6 Terabits per second (Tbps) with 7.2 Bpps at ingress and 10 Bpps at egress.

Robust programmability, with support for Cisco NX-API, Linux containers, XML, and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) APIs, Python.

High performance and scalability, with a four-core CPU, 32 GB of DRAM, and 70 MB of dynamic buffer allocation, making the switch excellent for massively scalable data centers and big data applications.

Flexibility

● The Cisco Nexus 3408-S supports break out for 2x200/50G, 4x100/50G/25G/10G, and 8x50G, supporting up to 128 ports of 100G or up to 168 ports of 50G.

◦ The NXM-X16C supports break out [1] for 2x50G and 4x25G/10G.

◦ The NXM-X4D supports break out ¹ for 2x200/50G or 4x100/50/25G/10G.

● Both fiber and copper cabling solutions are available for 10-, 25-, 40-, 50-, 100 and 400-Gbps connectivity, including an Active Optical Cable (AOC) and Direct-Attached Cable (DAC).

High availability

● Virtual Port Channel (vPC) technology provides layer 2 multipath through the elimination of Spanning Tree Protocol (STP). It also enables fully utilized bisectional bandwidth and simplified layer 2 logical topologies without the need to change the existing management and deployment models.

● The 512-way [2] Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP) routing enables the use of layer 3 fat-tree designs. This feature allows organizations to prevent network bottlenecks, increase resiliency, and add capacity with little network disruption.

● Advanced reboot ² capabilities include hot and cold patching.

● The switch uses hot-swappable Power-Supply Units (PSUs) and fans.

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

● Power-On Auto Provisioning (POAP) enables touchless bootup and configuration of the switch, drastically reducing provisioning time.

● Cisco Embedded Event Manager (EEM) and Python scripting enable automation and remote operations in the data center.

● Advanced buffer monitoring reports real-time buffer utilization per port and per queue, which allows organizations to monitor traffic bursts and application traffic patterns.

● Ethanalyzer is a built-in packet analyzer for monitoring and troubleshooting control-plane traffic and is based on the popular Wireshark open-source network protocol analyzer.

● Complete layer 3 routing protocol suites are supported, including Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Routing Information Protocol Version 2 (RIPv2) and Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS).

Table 1. Software licensing for Cisco Nexus 3408-S Switches

● Comprehensive layer 2 feature set: VLAN, IEEE 802.1Q trunking, Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), Unidirectional Link Detection (UDLD; Standard and Aggressive), Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP), Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP), and Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) guard ● Security: Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA), Access Control Lists (ACLs), storm control, and configurable Control-Plane Policing (CoPP) ● Management features: Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) support, Secure Shell Version 2 (SSHv2) access, Cisco Discovery Protocol, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), syslog ● Monitoring features: Advanced buffer monitoring, SPAN, and ERSPAN

Base license

● Layer 3 IP routing: Inter-VLAN Routing (IVR), static routes, Routing Information Protocol Version 2 (RIPv2), ACLs, Open Shortest Path First Version 2 (OSPFv2; limited to 256 routes), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) stub, Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP), and Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP)

Essential License
(N3K-ES-XM)

● Advanced layer 3 IP routing: OSPFv2, EIGRP, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS), and Virtual Routing and Forwarding Lite (VRF-Lite), DCNM and Telemetry Features: Buffer Drop Capture (BDC), High Delay Capture (HDC) and INT

Cisco Nexus Data Broker license (NDB-FX-SWT-K9)

● License for using the tap and SPAN aggregation functions with Cisco Nexus Data Broker; supported on the Essential License

Transceiver and cabling options

The Cisco Nexus 3400-S are Quad Small Form factor pluggable - Double Density (QSFP-DD) platforms that support the full range of optical transceivers, starting from Active Optical Cables (AOC), Direct Attach Cables (DAC).

Learn more details about the optical modules available and the minimum software release required for each supported optical module via the Transceiver Module Group (TMG) Compatibility Matrix .

Product specifications

The following table lists the product specification for Cisco Nexus 3408-S.

Table 2. Product specifications

Number of spanning-tree instances

Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP): 123

Multiple Spanning Tree (MST) Protocol: 64

Number of EtherChannels

Number of ports per EtherChannel

up to 128

Buffer size

70 Mb

Boot flash memory

128 GB

Power

Number of power supplies

2 (redundant)

Power supply types

AC (forward airflow)

Input voltage

100 to 240 VAC

Frequency

50 to 60 Hz

Power supply efficiency

89 to 91% at 220V

Cooling

Forward airflow: Port-side intake (air enters through ports and exits through fan tray and power supplies)

Six individual, hot-swappable fans (5+1 redundant)

Environment

Dimensions (height x width x depth)

6.97 in. x 17.3 in. x 31.6 in.

Weight

N3K-C3408-S weight across configurations:

● 68 lb (without LEMs, PSUs, or fans) ● 107.7 lb (with eight 100G LEMs, PSUs, and fans) ● 104.5 lb (with eight 400G LEMs, PSUs, and fans)

Individual LEMs:

● NXM-X16C (100G LEM) – 3.6 lb ● NXM-X4D (400G LEM) – 3.2 lb

Operating temperature

32 to 104° F (0 to 40°C)

Storage temperature

-40 to 158° F (-40 to 70°C)

Relative humidity

5 to 95% non-condensing

Altitude (Operating)

Up to 13,123 ft.

Altitude (Non-Operating)

Up to 16,000 ft.

● Layer 3 interfaces: Routed ports on interfaces, Switch Virtual Interfaces (SVIs), PortChannels, and subinterfaces (total: 1024) ● 64-way equal-cost multipath (ECMP) ● 4096 ACL entries ● Routing protocols: Static, RIPv2, EIGRP, OSPF, and BGP ● HSRP and VRRP ● ACL: Routed ACL with layer 3 and 4 options to match ingress and egress ACLs ● VRF: VRF-Lite (IP VPN), VRF-aware unicast (BGP, OSPF, and RIP), and VRF‑aware multicast ● VRF route leaking ● Jumbo frame support (up to 9216 bytes)

Security

● Ingress ACLs (standard and extended) on Ethernet ● Standard and extended layer 3 to 4 ACLs include IPv4, Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) ● VLAN-based ACLs (VACLs) ● Port-based ACLs (PACLs)

Regulatory standards compliance

The following table summarizes regulatory standards compliance for the Cisco Nexus 3000 Series.

Table 6. Regulatory standards compliance: Safety and EMC

Ordering information

The following table provides ordering information for Cisco Nexus 3408-S.

Table 7. Ordering information

N3K-ES-XM

Nexus 3408-S Essential License including Layer-3 LAN Enterprise, DCNM and Telemetry features

Spares

N3K-C3408-S=

Nexus 3408-S switch with 32 ports of QSFP-DD spare

NXM-X16C=

Nexus 100G Line Expansion Module spare

NXM-X4D=

Nexus 400G Line Expansion Module spare

NXM-XBLNK=

Nexus Blank Line Expansion Module spare

NXA-FAN-300CFM-PI=

Nexus fan, forward airflow (port-side intake) spare

NXA-PHV-2KW-PI=

Nexus 2KW HV power supply, forward airflow (port-side intake) spare

NXA-PDC-2KW-PI=

Nexus 2KW DC power supply, forward airflow (port-side intake) spare

NXA-PAC-2KW-PI=

Nexus 2KW AC power supply, forward airflow (port-side intake) spare

NXB-CPU-FRU=

Nexus CPU module spare

Warranty

The Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches have a 1-year limited hardware warranty. The warranty includes hardware replacement with a 10-day turnaround from receipt of a Return Materials Authorization (RMA).

Service and support

Cisco offers a wide range of services to help accelerate your success in deploying and optimizing the Cisco Nexus 3000 Series in your data center. The innovative Cisco Services offerings are delivered through a unique combination of people, processes, tools, and partners and are focused on helping you increase operational efficiency and improve your data center network. Cisco Advanced Services uses an architecture-led approach to help you align your data center infrastructure with your business goals and achieve long-term value. Cisco SMARTnet ^® Service helps you resolve mission-critical problems with direct access at any time to Cisco network experts and award-winning resources. With this service, you can take advantage of the Cisco Smart Call Home service capability, which offers proactive diagnostics and real-time alerts on your Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches. Spanning the entire network lifecycle, Cisco Services helps increase investment protection, optimize network operations, support migration operations, and strengthen your IT expertise.

Cisco Capital

Flexible payment solutions to help you achieve your objectives

Cisco Capital makes it easier to get the right technology to achieve your objectives, enable business transformation and help you stay competitive. We can help you reduce the total cost of ownership, conserve capital, and accelerate growth. In more than 100 countries, our flexible payment solutions can help you acquire hardware, software, services and complementary third-party equipment in easy, predictable payments. Learn more .

For more information

For more information, visit https://www.cisco.com/go/nexus3000 . For information about Cisco Nexus Data Broker, visit https://www.cisco.com/go/nexusdatabroker .

^[2] Wire rate on all ports for packets greater than 200 bytes