The Cisco UCS X-Series Direct Fabric Interconnect 9108 100G (UCSX-S9108-100G) is a modular fabric interconnect system designed for the Cisco UCS X9508 server chassis. The Cisco UCS X-Series Direct Fabric Interconnect 9108 100G ("fabric interconnect" or "fabric interconnect module" in this document) is part of the overall Cisco UCS X-Series Direct solution, which consists of the fabric interconnect plus additional Cisco equipment that enables end-to-end connectivity.

Deployed in pairs, the fabric interconnect offers robust and scalable networking, compute, storage, and GPU acceleration in a smaller physical form factor that can replace a standalone Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect. The fabric interconnect module is designed for cost, power, and physical space savings in less extensive applications, for example:

• at the network edge

• deployments of up to 8 blade servers or compute nodes.

The X-Series Direct supports the following:

• Eight QSFP ports (1 through 8) capable of up to 100 Gbps including two unified ports (1 and 2).

• CPU: Intel Atom® C3000 processor series System on a Chip (SOC), 2.2 GHz, 8 cores. One CPU is supported per UCS X-Series Direct Fabric Interconnect.

• Uplink Ports: Total of eight physical ports that can be configured as a mix of Fibre Channel and Ethernet to connect to ToR switches. The first two ports are unified ports to provide flexibility between Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet, and 6 ports are dedicated Ethernet.

  • Fibre Channel: A maximum of two uplinks configured through total of 8 break-out ports supporting either 8, 16 or 32 Gbps each fibre-channel ports. Fibre Channel ports support breakout to a maximum of eight ports, four breakout ports for each physical FC port.

  • Ethernet: Depending on the port speed configured on the physical port, Ethernet uplinks are supported as follows:

    • For 10G or 25G, a maximum of eight ports. Breakout ports or single QSA transceivers are supported.

    • For 100G, a maximum of eight ports. Because all eight ports support 100G Ethernet, Ethernet port breakout is not required.

    • For 1G, a maximum of two ports (ports seven and eight only). QSA is supported. For information about the port locations and identifiers, see Fabric Interconnect Front Panel.

  For more information, see Fabric Interconnect Port Configuration.

• 32 GB Flash Memory

• 16 GB DRAM

• Three fans for optimal cooling

• A boot-optimized mini-storage module consisting of one M.2 240G SATA SSD, with no RAID support.

• Local console connectivity: RS-232 Serial Console port (RJ45 connector)

• Bootup and system firmware log retrieval: USB 2.0 port Type-A connector

• Management connectivity: One 10/100/1000 Mbps management port

The fabric interconnect is always deployed in pairs in a Cisco UCS X9508 modular system. The UCS X-Series Direct system cannot operate with only one fabric interconnect.

The Cisco UCS X-Series Direct Fabric Interconnect 9108 100G front panel contains system LEDs that provide visual indicators for how the overall fabric interconnect is operating. Physical ports are also supported for network and storage connectivity through scale-out connections with ToR switches or direct connection to servers.