The Cisco Nexus ® 7000 Switches provide the foundation of the Cisco ® Unified Fabric. They are a modular data center-class product line designed for highly scalable 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks with a fabric architecture that scales beyond 15 terabits per second (Tbps). Designed to meet the requirements of the most mission-critical data centers, it delivers continuous system operation and virtualized, pervasive services. The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series is based on a proven operating system, with enhanced features to deliver real-time system upgrades with no service disruption together with exceptional manageability and serviceability.

The Cisco Nexus 7000 Fabric-2 Modules for the Cisco Nexus 7000 chassis are separate fabric modules that provide parallel fabric channels to each I/O and supervisor module slot. Up to five simultaneously active fabric modules work together delivering up to 550 Gbps per slot. Through the parallel forwarding architecture, a system capacity of more than 15 Tbps is achieved with the five fabric modules. The fabric module provides the central switching element for fully distributed forwarding on the I/O modules.