Switches Nexus 2000 Series

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The Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extender is a remote line card that attaches to parent Nexus chassis switches, extending port density and simplifying management by proxy-configuring through the parent device.

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A Nexus 2000 fabric extender operates in tandem with a parent Nexus 5K/6K/7K switch over dedicated fabric links, presenting all ports on the parent’s control plane and inheriting its software and management domain.

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Key hardware features include 24–48 fixed 1/10 GbE downlink ports, up to 4× 10/40 GbE uplinks, a compact 1RU form factor, front-to-back airflow, and redundant power supply options for high availability.

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Nexus 2000 models support 24 or 48 fixed 1/10 GbE downlinks and four 10 GbE or 40 GbE QSFP+ uplinks, enabling flexible host connectivity and aggregation to the parent switch.

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Scale by stacking up to 64 fabric extenders per parent switch, aggregating up to 3,072 10 GbE host ports or 6,144 1 GbE ports under a single management plane.

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Nexus 2000 units inherit NX-OS software and licensing from their parent switch; no separate licenses are needed, though the parent must run a supported NX-OS release and have Fabric Extender licenses.

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Management is centralized via the parent Nexus switch CLI or NX-OS GUI, using the ‘feature fex’ command to discover, allocate FEX IDs and configure ports as though they’re local interfaces.

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VLANs are created and applied on the parent switch; the Nexus 2000 inherits VLAN assignments and trunk configurations automatically over the fabric links without local VLAN database.

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Nexus 2000 supports dual active parent connections, redundant power supplies, front-to-back and back-to-front airflow choices, and FabricPath for loop-free multipathing and fast convergence.

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Power is supplied via internal or optional redundant AC/DC power supplies; hot-swappable modules ensure uninterrupted uptime and maintenance without service impact.

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Operating temperature: 0–40 °C; storage temperature: –40–70 °C; relative humidity: 5–85% non-condensing; compliance with NEBS Level 3 and ETSI standards for data center deployments.

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Firmware upgrades are performed centrally on the parent Nexus switch using the ‘install all’ or ‘install fex’ NX-OS commands, which propagate images to all attached fabric extenders automatically.

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Use parent switch show commands (e.g., ‘show fex’, ‘show interface fex-port’) to verify fabric link status, port errors, and VLAN mappings; check LEDs on both the parent and FEX units for hardware faults.

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Use cases include high-density server connectivity in rack environments, remote I/O consolidation in blade chassis, and centralized management in distributed data center topologies.

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By offloading port management to a parent switch, Nexus 2000 reduces configuration complexity, lowers CapEx/OpEx, streamlines cabling, and scales port density without sacrificing performance.

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Nexus 2000 are fabric extenders without independent control planes, relying on parent switches. Nexus 5000 are standalone modular switches with full NX-OS features, dedicated CPU, and local management.

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Enable AAA authentication on the parent switch, use role-based access control, apply port security and storm control policies on downlinks, and enforce Link Integrity Checks on fabric links.