Overview

Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches support the Quality of Service features that are described in this guide.

Information About Quality of Service

The configurable Cisco NX-OS quality of service (QoS) features allow you to classify the network traffic, prioritize the traffic flow, and provide congestion avoidance.

The default QoS configuration on the device provides lossless service for Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) traffic and best-effort service for Ethernet traffic. QoS can be configured to provide additional classes of service for Ethernet traffic. Cisco NX-OS QoS features are configured using Cisco Modular QoS CLI (MQC).

Standard Ethernet is a best-effort medium which means that it lacks any form of flow control. In the event of congestion or collisions, Ethernet will drop packets. The higher level protocols detect the missing data and retransmit the dropped packets.

Fibre Channel requires a reliable transport system that guarantees the delivery of every packet. To properly support FCoE, Ethernet has been enhanced with a priority flow control (PFC) mechanism to prevent congestion.

The FCoE QoS must be configured either if native FC or FCoE or FC and FCoE are in use. The FCoE QoS must be added even if Ethernet is not configured on the switch.

The following commands will enable the default QoS configuration: 
switch(config)# system qos
switch(config-sys-qos)# service-policy type queuing input fcoe-default-in-policy
switch(config-sys-qos)# service-policy type queuing output fcoe-default-out-policy
switch(config-sys-qos)# service-policy type qos input fcoe-default-in-policy
switch(config-sys-qos)# service-policy type network-qos fcoe-default-nq-policy

Modular QoS CLI

The Cisco Modular QoS CLI (MQC) provides a standard set of commands for configuring QoS.

You can use MQC to define additional traffic classes and to configure QoS policies for the whole system and for individual interfaces. Configuring a QoS policy with MQC consists of the following steps:

  1. Define traffic classes.
  2. Associate policies and actions with each traffic class.
  3. Attach policies to logical or physical interfaces as well as at the global system level.

MQC provides two command types to define traffic classes and policies:

class-map

Defines a class map that represents a class of traffic based on packet-matching criteria. Class maps are referenced in policy maps.

The class map classifies incoming packets based on matching criteria, such as the IEEE 802.1p class of service (CoS) value. Unicast and multicast packets are classified.

policy-map

Defines a policy map that represents a set of policies to be applied on a class-by-class basis to class maps.

The policy map defines a set of actions to take on the associated traffic class, such as limiting the bandwidth or dropping packets.

You define the following class-map and policy-map object types when you create them:

network-qos

Defines MQC objects that you can use for system level related actions.

qos

Defines MQC objects that you can use for classification.

queuing

Defines MQC objects that you can use for queuing and scheduling.


Note

The qos type is the default for the class-map and policy-map commands, but not for the service-policy which requires that you specify an explicit type.

You can attach policies to interfaces or EtherChannels as well as at the global system level by using the service-policy command.

You can view all or individual values for MQC objects by using the show class-map and show policy-map commands.

An MQC target is an entity (such as an Ethernet interface) that represents a flow of packets. A service policy associates a policy map with an MQC target and specifies whether to apply the policy on incoming or outgoing packets. This mapping enables the configuration of QoS policies such as marking, bandwidth allocation, buffer allocation, and so on.

QoS for Traffic Directed to the CPU

The device automatically applies QoS policies to traffic that is directed to the CPU to ensure that the CPU is not flooded with packets. Control traffic, such as bridge protocol data units (BPDU) frames, is given higher priority to ensure delivery.