Is Breakout Cable required to Connect Nexus 2348UPQ to Nexus 9300?

[S. B]

Hi all

Is a Breakout cable required to connect Nexus 2348UPQ Fex to a Cisco Nexus 9300 Switch(as Parent)?

A- Can we connect the N2348UPQ to Nexus 9336C-FX2 (36 X 40G) , with the 40G ports on both sides? or Breakout cable is required?

Same question about connecting a Nexus 2348UPQ Fex to the following Nexus 9300 Parent switches:

Cisco Nexus 93180YC-FX           48 x 1/10/25-Gbps fiber ports and 6 x 40/100-Gbps QSFP28 ports

 Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2        96 x 1/10/25-Gbps fiber ports and 12 x 40/100-Gbps QSFP28 ports

Cisco Nexus 93240YC-FX2           48 x 1/10/25-Gbps fiber ports and 12 x 40/100-Gbps QSFP28 ports

[Alex.M · Accepted solution]

Hi S. B,

No you do not need a breakout cable to connect a 2348UPQ to the switches mentioned.  A QSFP cable will suffice.  Here is what you will need besides the QSFP cable.

Parent Switch	Supported Topologies	Minimum Software Version
9336C-FX2	Straight-through	9.2(1)
93180YC-FX	Both Straight & Dual-Homed	9.2(1)
93360YC-FX2	Straight-through	9.3(1)
93240YC-FX2	Straight-through	9.2(1)

If you find yourself wondering the requirements for other platforms, there is a matrix maintained regarding parent-host and supported fexes found here:

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/Website/datacenter/fexmatrix/fexmatrix.html

Hth,

Alex

[S. B]

Dear @Alex.M 

Special Thanks

By the way, I think there is a typo mistake on the link that you sent to me.

Maybe Cisco can Fix It.

when you put the mouse pointer on N9K-C93240YC-FX2 , in NXOS mode, it shows 48x10/25G + 18x40/100G , but on the Cisco nexus 9300 compare web-page(click here), it shows that this switch has 12 x 40/100G uplinks.

Thanks

[w2w_Cabling123]

QSFP modules has 2 types of connectors: LC (with multiple channels in different wavelengths) and MPO (with multiple channels in 8 or more fibers - so it's physical). 

With the MPO version of QSFP, you can connect A to B with all channels so it's MPO to MPO. A breakout cable can separate a lane from the parallel QSFP interface, then you can create a 1 to N topology to run sub-rate (40G - 4x10G, or 100G - 4x 25G). People configure spine/leaf, and redundancy with this approach. 

Happy to share more ...