Why we cannot connect to FEX dual home with Nexus 7k

Keep in mind that a FEX inherently is a method by which to extend the fabric, thus the name. The ability to manage centrally while still having "line cards" distributed throughout the DC is the real reason to use a FEX. Drastically reducing cabling is valuable to anyone, technical or not, and the argument of being able to manage the entire infrastructure at fewer points is time savings, pure and simple.

One of your big doubts is that you're worried about single points of failure. All devices have the ability to be dual-homed, and in certain configurations, you can even establish virtual port channels with the Nexus 2K FEXs themselves.

Take a look at Cisco's documentation. You'll find that you can design a topology that is just as redundant as the "direct-cable" option you're considering, with less fuss.

Friend of mine asked this question in Vegas in Cisco Live and Cisco cited lack of customer demand and thermal as main reasons.

CMP is absolutely the right solution and we need it in every vendor switch and router, only proper OOB. Server guys have had this for over decade.

So please start adding this as scoring item in your RFQ, so vendors know there is demand.

Because of the thermal comment I emailed Freescale (most routers and switches use their SOC in control-plane) and asked if they are planning to support anything like Intel vPro, which helps implement OOB functionality...

From our marketing team updates I heard something similar will be implemented in the next generation of our multicore processors, but this is under discussion yet, so I do not have any details. Ok, I will pass your suggestion to our core design team, hope they will take it into account.

There is no guarantee whatsoever that Cisco would implement OOB on Nexus 7k in future supervisors, but I thought it is interesting that Freescale is considering adding a feature like this to their silicon.