thanks. I had read about the Nexus a bit, but was wondering if our existing 6500 chassis with the 10g card we already purchased would work. I think they will, but wanted verification.

Has anyone had any experience with connecting the Intel EXPX9501AFXSR 10g card to a WS-x6708-10g blade? I am specifically looking for which optic we should be using to make this card work.

thanks.

Don't have any first-hand experience, but if it works with a Nexus I don't see why it should not work with a Cat6500 WS-X6708 card. It's 10GE after all for both.

Nexus is generally preferrable when you have high density of 10GE because the cost per switchport for 10GE is much higher in the Cat6500 compared to Nexus.

The Intel card has the letters "SR" at the end which suggests to me that if you have a SFP+ of the SR type in your switch it will work regardless of switch being Cat6k or Nexus.

HTH

Intel EXPX9501AFXSR 10g card will work with X2-10GB-SR optics for WS-x6708-10g blade.

Only thing you have to see is that, what is the distance between the two Optic card. As distance varies too much for this card 30m over 62.5micron MMF cable to 300m on 50Micron Multimode Fiber (MMF).

So check your optical cable spec if distance is over 100m. As that kind of distance ONLY available on MMF which has 2000MHz-Km of modal bandwidth.

Check the libk for detail.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps708/product_data_sheet09186a00801dce34_ps4835_Products_Data_Sheet.html