Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Configuration Limits for Cisco NX-OS Release 4.1(3)

This document describes the Cisco configuration limits for Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches running Cisco NX-OS Release 4.1(3). Some of these limits apply only when one or more Cisco Nexus 2000 Fabric Extender units are attached to the switch.

Configuration Limits

The following tables list the Cisco verified limits for Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches running Cisco NX-OS Release 4.1(3).

Table 1 Ethernet Environments

Parameter

Limit

Active VLANs/VSANs per switch

512. 31 are set aside for VSANs and the remaining are for VLANs.

VLAN/VSAN ID Space

4,096

STP Logical Interfaces

3,6001

MST Instances per bridge topology per switch

64 (IEEE Standard)

VLAN ACLs (VACLs) per switch

1,024

Port ACLs (PACLs) per switch

2562

ACL Accounting

32

Member interfaces per EtherChannel

16
1 The 3600 logical interfaces apply to both PVRST and MST. If MST is used, the scale applies to the maximum number of MST instances (64).
2 There can be a maximum of 50 ACEs per PACL.
Table 2 Fibre Channel Environments

Parameter

Limit

Device Aliases per fabric

8,000

Switches per physical fabric or VSAN

503

Domains per VSAN

404

Native FC Links per switch

16—Requires two N5K-M1008 expansion modules.

FLOGIs or FDISCs per NPV port group

255

Zones per virtual or physical F port (includes all VSANs)

32

Zone sets per switch (includes all VSANs)

5005

Zone members per physical fabric (includes all VSANs)

8,0006

Zones per switch (includes all VSANs)

8,000

Maximum diameter of a SAN Fabric

3 hops7

FSPF interface instances per switch

5128

ISL instances per switch

2569

Virtual Fibre Channel interfaces

16010

Max FCIDs allocated

2,048

Fibre Channel Flows

32

3 The switch is capable of supporting up to 239 switches per fabric but this is not currently implemented.
4 The switch is capable of supporting up to 239 domains per VSAN but the scale is not currently implemented.
5 The switch is capable of 1000 Zone Sets but this is not currently implemented.
6 The switch is capable of supporting up to 20,000 zone members per fabric but the scale is not currently implemented.
7 The switch is capable of supporting up to 12 hops but the scale is not currently implemented.
8 The switch is capable of supporting 4096 (the number of Extended ISLs (16) times the number of VSANs (256)) but the scale is not currently implemented.
9 Each ISL instance can support up to 32 VSAN instances.
10 The switch is capable of supporting 480 virtual Fibre Channel interfaces but the scale is not currently implemented.
Table 3 General Parameters

Parameter

Limit

Maximum Fabric Extenders per Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch

12 units11

Maximum Fabric Extenders dual-homed to a vPC Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch pair

12 units12

Maximum number of hosts connected to Cisco Nexus 2000 Fabric Extenders connected to Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches

480 hosts13

MAC Table Size

16,000 entries14

Event Traps - forward via Email

4 destinations15

QoS System Classes

5 all user-configurable classes

Port channels

4 SAN port channels and 16 ports per EtherChannel (with the combination not exceeding 16)

SPAN Sessions

2 active sessions

Egress SPAN sources

2

11 The number of Fabric Extenders is limited by the total number hosts connected through the single homed Fabric Extenders to the parent Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch. This applies both in the case where the parent switch is running vPC or not.
12 The number of Fabric Extenders is limited by the total number hosts connected through dual homed Fabric Extenders to a pair of Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches running vPC. In dual homed Fabric Extender vPC mode, the Fabric Extenders provide a redundant network path to the hosts in case of a direct failure in the primary path.
13 The limit of 480 applies equally to single homed and dual homed Fabric Extender topologies. In single homed topologies, the maximum number of Fabric Extenders is 12 which implies up to 40 hosts may be connected to each Fabric Extender for a total of 480 hosts per Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch. In a dual homed Fabric Extender topology, the total number of hosts supported is also 480.
14 1,000 entries are reserved multicast MAC addresses and the remainder are for unicast MAC addresses.
15 The switch is capable of up to 50 different destinations but this is not currently implemented.