Cisco Nexus 9332PQ Question

[Craddockc]

Community,

I was hired on a year ago at my company and when I came on there were four Cisco nexus 9332PQ switches in the environment but they are not configured and not being used for anything. They did a big DC upgrade a few years ago before I got here and those were part of the package. Were running two Cisco Nexus 9396PX at the core in NX-OS mode and running 2k FEX's for Access connectivity to the network. Im assuming that the consultants specd out these 9332's as well but am not sure what their motive was for doing so. The issue is theyre all 40Gbps QSFP connections and we have nothing in our environment that needs those. I thought about maybe using breakout cables to bastardize the 9332's for additional 10Gbps connectivity but thats not really feasible right now due to their length limitations. My question is this: What are these 9332PQs really used for? Im reading that theyre leaf node switches, do most people hook up ESXI hosts and whatever else that need 40Gbps connections? 

Thanks.

[Rick1776 · Accepted solution]

It's really meant as an aggregation layer to connect 40G to 40G FEX's and a ACI Leaf that you can connect to a 40G UCS FI 9300 series.

Becareful with the 40G to 10G SFP not all ports can be converted.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/interfaces_modules/transceiver_modules/compatibility/matrix/40GE_Tx_Matrix.html

[Craddockc]

Rick,

Thank you this is very helpful! It makes sense as a 40Gbps Agg switch if you have 10Gbps FEX's with 40Gbps uplinks. It also makes sense to use it as  Leaf node and directly connect UCS FI's that can do 40Gbps as well. 

Thanks!