NX-OS is a

network operating system A network operating system (NOS) is a specialized operating system for a network device such as a router, switch or firewall. Historically operating systems with networking capabilities were described as network operating systems, because they al ...

for the Nexus-series

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

switch In electrical engineering, a switch is an electrical component that can disconnect or connect the conducting path in an electrical circuit, interrupting the electric current or diverting it from one conductor to another. The most common type of ...

es and MDS-series

Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to servers in storage area networks (SAN) in commercial data cen ...

storage area network A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access data storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from serve ...

switches made by

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

. It evolved from the Cisco operating system SAN-OS, originally developed for its MDS switches. It is based on

Wind River Linux Wind River Systems, also known as Wind River (trademarked as Wndrvr), is an Alameda, California–based company, subsidiary of Aptiv PLC. The company develops embedded system and cloud software consisting of real-time operating systems software, ...

and is inter-operable with other Cisco operating systems. The

command-line interface A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

of NX-OS is similar to that of

Cisco IOS The Internetworking Operating System (IOS) is a family of proprietary network operating systems used on several router and network switch models manufactured by Cisco Systems. The system is a package of routing, switching, internetworking, and ...

. Recent NX-OS has both Cisco-style CLI and

Bash Bash or BASH may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Bash!'' (Rockapella album), 1992 * ''Bash!'' (Dave Bailey album), 1961 * '' Bash: Latter-Day Plays'', a dramatic triptych * ''BASH!'' (role-playing game), a 2005 superhero game * "Bash" ('' ...

shell available. On NX-OS 7.0(3)I3, the output from uname with the -a command line argument might look like the text below: $ uname -a Linux version 3.4.91-WR5.0.1.13_standard+ (divvenka@sjc-ads-7035) (gcc version 4.6.3 (Wind River Linux Sourcery CodeBench 4.6-60) ) #1 SMP Tue Feb 6 12:43:13 PST 2018

Core features

* System Manager (sysmgr) * Persistent Storage Service (PSS) * Message & Transaction Services (MTS)

Additional features

and

FICON FICON (Fibre Connection) is the IBM proprietary name for the ANSI ''FC-SB-3 Single-Byte Command Code Sets-3 Mapping Protocol'' for Fibre Channel (FC) protocol. It is a FC layer 4 protocol used to map both IBM's antecedent (either ESCON or para ...

FCIP Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP or FC/IP, also known as Fibre Channel tunneling or storage tunneling) is an Internet Protocol (IP) created by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for storage technology. An FCIP entity functions to encapsulate Fib ...

FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is a computer network technology that encapsulates Fibre Channel frames over Ethernet networks. This allows Fibre Channel to use 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks (or higher speeds) while preserving the Fibre Channel ...

(Nexus 5000/7000 linecards) *

iSCSI Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...

IPsec In computing, Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a secure network protocol suite that authenticates and encrypts packets of data to provide secure encrypted communication between two computers over an Internet Protocol network. It is used in ...

* Scheduling *

NPIV NPIV or N_Port ID Virtualization is a Fibre Channel feature whereby multiple Fibre Channel node port (N_Port) IDs can share a single physical N_Port. This allows multiple Fibre Channel initiators to occupy a single physical port, easing hardwar ...

NX Port ID Virtualization * Inter–VSAN Routing *

VSAN A virtual storage area network (virtual SAN, VSAN or vSAN) is a logical representation of a physical storage area network (SAN). A VSAN abstracts the storage-related operations from the physical storage layer, and provides shared storage access to ...

* Zoning (Hard zoning) * Callhome *

Cisco Fabric Services Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, s ...

(distributed configuration) *

SSH The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution. SSH applications are based on ...

and

Telnet Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet control i ...

* Storage Media Encryption * Port Channels * Cisco Data Mobility Manager * Fibre Channel Write Acceleration

Switches running NX-OS

* Nexus B22 (HP, Dell, Fujitsu) * Nexus 9000 series * Nexus 7700 series * Nexus 7000 series * Nexus 6000 series * Nexus 5000 series * Nexus 4000 (for

IBM BladeCenter The IBM BladeCenter was IBM's blade server architecture, until it was replaced by Flex System in 2012. The x86 division was later sold to Lenovo in 2014. History Introduced in 2002, based on engineering work started in 1999, the IBM eServe ...

) * Nexus 2000 series * Nexus 3000 * Nexus 1000V * MDS 9700 FC Directors * MDS 9500 FC Directors * MDS 9250i FC Switch * MDS 9222i FC Switch * MDS 9100 FC Switches

Differences between IOS and NX-OS

* NX-OS does not support the login command to switch users. * NX-OS does not distinguish between standard or extended access lists, all lists are named and "extended" in functionality. * NX-OS did not support scp server prior to 5.1(1) release. * In NX-OS, there is no "write" command to save the configuration like on IOS (one uses the "copy" command, instead). Instead, command aliases can be created to provide the "write" command. * When accessing NX-OS, users authenticate directly to their assigned privilege level. *

server is enabled while

server is disabled by default in NX-OS.

Releases

4.1, 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 7.0, 9.2, 9.3, 10.1

References

External links

Cisco Content Hub

Cisco Feature Navigator

Proprietary operating systems Network operating systems Cisco software {{Routing software