Product Information
Cisco NX-OS software is a modular multitasking and multithreaded operating system built with high availability, detailed fault management, and nondisruptive serviceability at its foundation. Cisco NX-OS helps ensure continuous operation and sets the standard for mission-critical environments. The modular design of Cisco NX-OS makes zero-impact operations a reality and enables exceptional operational flexibility.
Cisco NX-OS provides a robust and comprehensive feature set that fulfills the routing, switching, and storage 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.
- Software compatibility
Cisco NX-OS interoperates with Cisco products running any variant of the Cisco IOS software operating system. It also interoperates with any networking OS that conforms to the networking standards listed as supported in this data sheet. - Common software throughout the data center
Cisco NX-OS simplifies the data center operating environment and provides a unified OS designed to run all areas of the data center network, including storage, virtualization, and Layer 3 network protocols. - Modular software design
Cisco NX-OS is designed to support distributed multithreaded processing on symmetric multiprocessors (SMPs), multicore CPUs, and distributed line-card processors. Computationally intensive tasks, such as hardware table programming, can be offloaded to dedicated processors distributed across the line cards. Cisco NX-OS modular processes are instantiated on demand, each in a separate protected memory space. - Virtual device contexts (VDCs)
Cisco NX-OS offers the capability to segment OS and hardware resources into virtual contexts that emulate virtual devices. Each VDC has its own software processes, dedicated hardware resources (physical interfaces, VLANs, routing table size, Virtual Route Forwarding [VRF], etc. ), and independent management environment. VDCs are instrumental in the consolidation of separate networks onto a common infrastructure, maintaining the administrative boundary separation and fault-isolation characteristics of physically separate networks while providing many of the operating cost benefits of a single infrastructure. - Continuous system operation
Cisco NX-OS provides continuous system operation, permitting maintenance, upgrades, and software certification without service interruption. The combination of process modularity, transparent In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU) capability, and stateful graceful restart mitigates the effects of software upgrades and other operations. - Hitless ISSU
Hitless ISSU provides the capability to perform transparent software upgrades on platforms with redundant supervisors, reducing downtime and allowing customers to integrate the newest features and functions with little or no negative effect on network operation. - Smooth development of enhancements and problem fixes
The modularity of Cisco NX-OS allows new features, enhancements, and problem fixes to be transparently integrated into the software. These updated images can then be installed without disruption using Cisco ISSU. - Process survivability
Critical processes are run in protected memory space and independently of each other and the kernel, providing detailed service isolation and fault containment and enabling modular patching and upgrading and rapid restartability. Individual processes can be restarted independently without loss of state information and without affecting data forwarding, so that after an upgrade or failure, processes restart in milliseconds without negatively affecting adjacent devices or services. - Stateful supervisor failover
Redundant supervisors are kept synchronized at all times to enable rapid stateful supervisor failover. Sophisticated checks are in place to help ensure that the state is consistent and reliable throughout the entire distributed architecture after failover occurs. - Reliable interprocess communication
Cisco NX-OS facilitates reliable communication between processes to help ensure that all messages are delivered and properly acted on during failure and adverse conditions. This communication helps ensure process synchronization and state consistency across processes that may be instantiated on processors distributed over multiple supervisors and I/O modules. - Redundant switched Ethernet out-of-band channels (EOBCs)
Cisco NX-OS can make full use of redundant EOBCs for communication between control and I/O module processors. - Troubleshooting and diagnostics
Cisco NX-OS is built with unique serviceability functions to enable network operators to take early action based on network trends and events, enhancing network planning and improving network operations center (NOC) and vendor response times. Cisco Smart Call Home, Cisco Generic Online Diagnostics (GOLD), and Cisco Embedded Event Manager (EEM) are some of the features that enhance the serviceability of Cisco NX-OS. - Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN)
The SPAN feature allows an administrator to analyze all traffic between ports (called the SPAN source ports) by nonintrusively directing the SPAN session traffic to a SPAN destination port that has an external analyzer attached to it. Encapsulated Remote SPAN (ERSPAN) allows remote monitoring of multiple switches across the network by encapsulating SPAN traffic into a generic routing encapsulation (GRE) tunnel. - Ethanalyzer
Cisco NX-OS includes a built-in packet analyzer to monitor and troubleshoot control- and data-plane traffic. The packet analyzer is based on the popular Wireshark open source network protocol analyzer.