Modular Software Design - Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Configuration Manual

Modular Software Design

This figure shows an example of a spine/leaf topology with four leaf switches (Cisco Nexus 9396 or 93128)
connecting into two spine switches (Cisco Nexus 9508) and two 40G Ethernet uplinks from each leaf to each
spine.
Figure 1: Spine/Leaf Topology
Modular Software Design
The Cisco NX-OS software supports distributed multithreaded processing on symmetric multiprocessors
(SMPs), multi-core CPUs, and distributed data module processors. The Cisco NX-OS software offloads
computationally intensive tasks, such as hardware table programming, to dedicated processors distributed
across the data modules. The modular processes are created on demand, each in a separate protected memory
space. Processes are started and system resources are allocated only when you enable a feature. A real-time
preemptive scheduler helps to ensure the timely processing of critical functions.
Serviceability
The Cisco NX-OS software has serviceability functions that allow the device to respond to network trends
and events. These features help you with network planning and improving response times.
Switched Port Analyzer
The Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) feature allows you to analyze all traffic between ports (called the SPAN
source ports) by nonintrusively directing the SPAN session traffic to a SPAN destination port that has an
external analyzer attached to it. For more information about SPAN, see the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series NX-OS
System Management Configuration Guide.
Ethanalyzer
Ethanalyzer is a Cisco NX-OS protocol analyzer tool based on the Wireshark (formerly Ethereal) open source
code. Ethanalyzer is a command-line version of Wireshark for capturing and decoding packets. You can use
Ethanalyzer to troubleshoot your network and analyze the control-plane traffic. For more information about
Ethanalyzer, see the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series NX-OS Troubleshooting Guide.
Cisco Nexus 9000 Series NX-OS Fundamentals Configuration Guide, Release 7.x
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Overview