Cabling requirements for Nexus 5596

[Mikey John]

Hi All,

We are deploying Nexus 5596 as Top of the Rack switches for a few of our servers, and need your help in validating the cabling requirements.

There will be 4xR710 and 4xR610 servers that would be installed on the same rack as the Nexus switches. There are 6 (10Gb) ports from each of these servers - 2x10Gb for iSCSI, 2x10Gb for LAN (uplinks) and 2x1Gb for DRAC and OOB management.

Since the SFP transceiver modules are very expensive, we were looking to go for the Cisco 10GBASE SFP+ Modules. Iam a little confused as to how these Twinax cables fit into the switches/servers. Can you please let me know if the below part number ordered would suffice our requirements, or is there any other adaptor/converter needed to be inserted on the switches or server?

Cisco SFP-H10GB-CU3M - 10GBASE-CU SFP+ Cable 3 Meter, passive

Also, please suggest if we can get Twinax cables for 1Gb connections for DRAC and OOB?

Can these Twinax cables be used for SAN setups as well? We have a few Equallogic servers being installed with broadcom NetExtreme cards.

Appreciate your help on this.

Thanks

Mikey

[Mikey John]

Appreciate if someone provides inputs on the above query.

Thanks

Mikey

[Jerry Ye]

The Twinax cables have build-in SFP+ connection. Meaning the NIC card on the remote side needs to accept the SFP+. For your servers, I am not 100% sure it will take it.

To make it simple SFP+ is not a RJ45 connection. It is a bundle of cable and SFP+ on both end.

No, you cannot use the SFP+ for SAN setup, FC are fibers.

HTH,

jerry