The Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect provides both network connectivity and management capabilities to the Cisco UCS system. The fabric interconnect provides Ethernet and Fibre Channel to the servers in the system. The servers connect to the fabric interconnect and then to the LAN or SAN.
Each Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect runs the Cisco UCS Manager to fully manage all Cisco UCS elements. The fabric interconnect supports 10/25-Gigabit Ethernet ports in the fabric with 40/100-Gigabit Ethernet uplink ports. High availability can be achieved when a Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect is connected to another Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect through the L1 or L2 port on each device. UCS 6454 FI is a 1RU top-of-rack switch that mounts in a standard 19-inch rack, such as the Cisco R Series rack. It has 44 10/25-Gigabit Ethernet SFP28 ports (16 unified ports), 4 1/10/25-Gigabit Ethernet ports and 6 40/100-Gigabit Ethernet QSFP28 ports. Each 40/100-Gigabit Ethernet port can break out into 4 10/25-Gigabit Ethernet uplink ports. The 16 unified ports support 10/25-Gigabit Ethernet or 8/16/32-Gbps Fibre Channel speeds.
Note
The Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect supported 8 unified ports (ports 1–8) with Cisco UCS Manager 4.0(1) and 4.0(2), but with release 4.0(4) and later it supports 16 unified ports (ports 1–16).
The Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect supports a maximum of eight FCoE port channels or four SAN ports, or a maximum of eight SAN port channels and FCoE port channels (four each). It also has one network management port, one console port for setting the initial configuration, and one USB port for saving or loading configurations. The FI also includes L1/L2 ports for connecting two fabric interconnects for high availability. The fabric interconnect contains a CPU board that consists of the following:
Intel Xeon D-1528 v4 Processor, 1.6 GHz
64 GB of RAM
8 MB of NVRAM (4 NVRAM chips)
128-GB SSD (bootflash)
The ports on the Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect can be configured to carry either Ethernet or Fibre Channel traffic. You can configure only the first 16 ports to carry Fibre Channel traffic. The ports cannot be used by a Cisco UCS domain until you configure them.
Note
When you configure a port on a fabric interconnect, the administrative state is automatically set to enabled. If the port is connected to another device, this may cause traffic disruption. The port can be disabled and enabled after it has been configured.
Ports on the Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect are numbered and grouped according to their function. The ports are numbered top to bottom and left to right. Figure 12-9 shows the port numbering, which is as follows:
Figure 12-9 Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect
1. Ports 1–16: Unified ports can operate as 10/25-Gigabit Ethernet or 8/16/32-Gbps Fibre Channel. FC ports are converted in groups of four.
2. Ports 17–44: Each port can operate as either a 10-Gbps or 25-Gbps SFP28 port.
Note
When you use Cisco UCS Manager releases earlier than 4.0(4), ports 9–44 are 10/25-Gbps Ethernet or FCoE.
3. Ports 45–48: Each port can operate as a 1-Gigabit Ethernet, 10-Gigabit Ethernet, or 25-Gigabit Ethernet or FCoE port.
4. Uplink Ports 49–54: Each port can operate as either a 40-Gbps or 100-Gbps Ethernet or FCoE port. When you use a breakout cable, each of these ports can operate as 4 × 10-Gigabit Ethernet or 4 × 25-Gigabit Ethernet or FCoE ports. Ports 49–54 can be used only to connect to Ethernet or FCoE uplink ports, and not to UCS server ports.
Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnects support splitting a single 40/100-Gigabit Ethernet QSFP port into four 10/25-Gigabit Ethernet ports using a supported breakout cable. These ports can be used only as uplink ports connecting to a 10/25G switch. On the UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect, by default, there are six ports in the 40/100G mode. These are ports 49 to 54. These 40/100G ports are numbered in a 2-tuple naming convention. For example, the second 40G port is numbered as 1/50. The process of changing the configuration from 40G to 10G, or from 100G to 25G is called breakout, and the process of changing the configuration from 4 × 10G to 40G or from 4 × 25G to 100G is called unconfigure.
When you break out a 40G port into 10G ports or a 100G port into 25G ports, the resulting ports are numbered using a 3-tuple naming convention. For example, the breakout ports of the second 40-Gigabit Ethernet port are numbered as 1/50/1, 1/50/2, 1/50/3, and 1/50/4. Figure 12-9 shows the rear view of the Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect and includes the ports that support breakout port functionality (Group 4).