The Cisco Nexus 6001 provides higher port density, 48x10G
& 4x40G, throughput, built in Layer 3 and 40G uplinks, although it only
supports FCoE not Native Fiber Channel as the 5548UP. The lack of FC on the 6001 Leaf switch however is not a big problem as I'm sure that Cisco will be building a 1/2/4/8 Gbps SAN Fiber Channel card for
the 6004 allowing for converged networking in the future at the Spine.
Switch
|
Port Density
|
Forwarding Rate – Layer 2
|
Forwarding Rate – Layer 3
|
MAC Entries
|
USD List Price
|
Nexus 5548
(N5K-C5548UPM-B-S48)
|
48 SFP+
|
960 Gbps or 714.24 mpps
|
160 Gbps or 240 mpps
|
32,000
|
$42,000
|
Nexus 6001
(N6K-C6001-64P)
|
48 SFP+
4 QSFP+
|
Full Line rate
|
1.28 Tbps
|
256,000
|
$40,000
|