The Cisco Nexus 5600 platform 10-Gbps switches include both 1-rack-unit (1RU) and 2RU switches built to meet the challenges of today's data centers with a flexible agile and energy-efficient design. These 10-Gbps switches are an important component of the Cisco Unified Data Center architecture complementing existing Cisco Nexus switches. These energy-efficient switches offer 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE providing integrated Layer 2 and 3 features at wire speed and low latency of approximately 1 microsecond for any packet size. With a choice of port-side intake and fan-side intake airflow options to align with cold-aisle and hot-aisle placement in the data center the 10-Gbps switches are designed for a broad range of traditional data center and large-scale virtualized cloud deployments.

The 10-Gbps switches together with the Cisco NX-OS Software operating system provides customers with features and capabilities that are widely deployed in data centers around the world. NX-OS is a purpose-built data center operating system designed for performance resiliency scalability manageability and programmability. It meets Ethernet and storage networking requirements providing a robust and comprehensive feature set that can meet the demanding requirements of virtualization and automation in present and future data centers.

The Cisco Nexus 5600 platform 10-Gbps switches are designed for top-of-rack (ToR) and middle-of-row (MoR) deployment in data centers that support enterprise applications service provider hosting and cloud computing environments.