What Network Switch should I use to connect a UCS 6296UP?

[meinanut1]

Currently we have dual UCS 6296's connecting via 10g to dual Nexus 5010's..  L2 Only.  

My question is, do I need a nexus switch to conenct these UCS chassis? or can I use a 4500E or 6800 with 10g uplinks to the UCS's?   We're not doing anythink special like VSAN or Zones on the Nexus..  Thes are two 10g connections from each 6296 and port-chaneled witht the various VLAN's allowed on the trunk..

Thanks

[Anuj Thapa]

10G is preferred.

[Walter Dey]

From the Ethernet connectivity point of view: best practise is to do 10G port-channel to North bound switch: either classical pc, or multi-chassis etherchannel, like eg. vPC.

10G for the simply reason, that there are use cases, where traffic will go out of UCS, getting switched, and enter the UCS again; this can happen even for L2 (intra vlan traffic, between fabrics), and of course for L3 inter vlan traffic. Therefore if you only have 1G, it can become a severe bottleneck.