The Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect (UCSC-FI-6536) is a 1-rack unit (RU), top of rack (TOR), fixed-port data center platform that provides both network connectivity and management capabilities to the Cisco UCS system.

The fabric interconnect can provide Ethernet and Fibre Channel connectivity to the servers in the system. The servers connect to the fabric interconnect, and then to the LAN or SAN.

High availability redundancy can be achieved when a fabric interconnect is connected to another fabric interconnect through the L1 or L2 port on each device.

Each Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect offers the following features:

• Thirty-six QSFP28 ports capable of 100G including 4 unified ports (33-36). Ports also support:

  • Autonegotiating with peer devices to speeds of 40G, 25G, 10G, and 1G.

  • Port breakout is supported for Ethernet ports (1-32) and Unified ports (33-36).

    • Ethernet breakout is supported on chassis ports 1 through 36 when each port is configured with a breakout cable.

      • The Dynamic Ethernet Breakout feature enables converting a standard Ethernet port to a breakout port on-the-fly so that you do not need to reboot the Fabric Interconnect. Dynamic Ethernet Breakout also supports converting breakout ports back to a standard Ethernet port without a reboot.

    • FC breakout is supported on chassis ports 33 through 36 when each port is configured with a four-port breakout cable, for example 1/33/1, 1/33/2, 1/33/3, and 1/33/4 for four FC breakout ports on chassis physical port 33.

      Note	Fibre Channel support is only available via configuring Unified Ports (33-36) as FC breakout.

      • FC breakout ports support peer communication at fixed speeds of 8Gbs, 16 Gbps, and 32 Gbps.

      • All four FC breakout ports must be configured with the same speed. Mixed speeds on a QSFP port's FC breakout ports are not supported.

      • Using breakout ports enables the fabric interconnect to support the maximum 16 FC ports supported by Fibre Channel.

    Note	Converting from Ethernet to FC breakout ports, or FC breakout ports back to Ethernet, requires a reboot/reload after changing the breakout type. For additional information about breakout capabilities, see Port Breakout.

    Note	FCoE storage ports are not supported.

• One management port (one 10/100/1000BASE-T port)

• Two L1/L2 Ethernet RJ-45 ports for high availability or cluster configurations. Ethernet ports support 10/100/1000Mb speed.

• One console port (RS-232)

• One USB 3.0 port

• CPU: 4 Core, 1.8GHz, Intel 5th-Generation core processor

• Memory:

  • 32 GB DDR4 DIMMs

  • 128 GB M.2 SSD Flash Drive

  • 32 GB Boot Flash (16 MB primary, and 16 MB standby/golden)

This fabric interconnect includes the following user-replaceable components:

• Fan modules (6), each is a port-side exhaust fan module with dark grey latch coloring (UCS-FAN-6536).

• Power supply modules (2). One power supply module (PSU) is the active module for operations, and the second PSU is the standby for redundancy [1+1]) with the following choices:

  • 1100-W AC power supply with dark grey latch coloring (UCS-PSU-6536-AC)

  Note	All fan modules and power supplies must use the same airflow direction.

The following figure shows the fabric interconnect features on the port side of the chassis.

To determine which transceivers, adapters, and cables are support the fabric interconnect, see the Cisco Transceiver Modules Compatibility Information document.

The following figure shows the fabric interconnect features on the power supply side of the chassis.

The following figure shows the side of the chassis.

Plan to position the ports in a hot aisle so that fans and power supplies intake air from the cold aisle, blow the cool air through the fabric interconnect, and exhaust the heated air into the hot aisle.

The fan and power supply modules are field replaceable. You can replace one fan module or one power supply module during operations so long as the other modules are installed and operating. If you have only one power supply installed, you can install the replacement power supply in the open slot before removing the original power supply.

Note	All fan and power supply modules must have the same direction of airflow. Otherwise, the fabric interconnect can overheat and shut down.

Caution

Because fans and power supply modules have port-side exhaust airflow (blue coloring for fan modules), you must locate the ports in the hot aisle. If you locate the air intake in a hot aisle, the fabric interconnect can overheat and shut down.