Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switches Data Sheet

 

Product overview

Application architectures and deployment modes are rapidly evolving. Modern applications are multinode, highly modular, and deployed over a combination of bare-metal, virtual, and cloud data center environments. In addition to that, individual departments within an organization have varying infrastructure and networking needs. These factors require that data center networks be simple, programmable, extensible, scalable, and shareable to meet the demands of applications.

The Cisco Nexus^® 9000 Series Switches operate in one of two modes – Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI^™) or Cisco NX-OS. In Cisco ACI mode, these switches provide a turnkey, fully automated, policy-based architecture to design and manage data center fabrics. In Cisco NX-OS mode, these switches provide the capability to use foundational layer 2/3 technologies, as well as modern technologies such as VXLAN, with a Border Gateway Protocol‒Ethernet VPN (BGP-EVPN) control plane, Segment routing, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), and automation via NX-APIs.

The Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches include the Nexus 9500 Series modular switches and the Nexus 9200/9300 Series fixed switches.

Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switch Chassis

The Cisco Nexus 9500 Series modular switches support a comprehensive selection of line cards and fabric modules that provide 1-, 10-, 25-, 40-, 50-, 100-, 200-, and 400-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. Using these line cards the Cisco Nexus 9500 Series switches can be configured with up to.

1.     256 400-Gigabit Ethernet ports (or)

2.     524 200-Gigabit Ethernet ports^# (or)

3.     1024 100-Gigabit Ethernet ports (or)

4.     2048 50-Gigabit Ethernet ports (or)

5.     1024 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports (or)

6.     2304 25-Gigabit Ethernet ports (or)

7.     2304 1/10-Gigabit Ethernet ports

The supervisor, system controller, power supplies, and line cards are common across all three switches. Each switch, however, has unique fabric modules, and fan trays that plug in vertically in the rear of the chassis.

Table 1.           Features and benefits

Deployment scenarios

The Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switches support various deployment scenarios:

●     Spine nodes in a spine-leaf fabric

●     Core or aggregation node in an L2/L3 network

●     Border gateway in a L2/L3 network

Spine-leaf fabric architecture

The high port-density and ability to support multispeed ports on the same chassis make the Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switches the ideal choice as a spine in spine-leaf fabric architectures. The Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switches can function as a spine in either Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) or Cisco NX-OS operating modes (Figure 2).

Spine-Leaf Architecture using Cisco Nexus 9300 and 9500 Switches

Cisco ACI is the most comprehensive solution to enable data center automation and application agility. It provides a secure, scalable, deterministic, and integrated policy-based architecture, which enables rapid application deployment and workload mobility in data centers. The Cisco Nexus 9000 Series cloud-scale switches are the foundation to deploy and run Cisco ACI. The Cisco Nexus 9500 Series cloud-scale switches and select Cisco 9300 Series cloud-scale switches provide the ACI spine functionality in the Cisco ACI fabric. The Cisco Nexus 9300 Series cloud-scale switches provide the ACI leaf functionality in the Cisco ACI fabric.

In Cisco NX-OS mode, the Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switches support foundational routing and switching technologies along with modern technologies such as VXLAN with BGP-EVPN control plane, segment routing, MPLS, and open APIs. These technologies provide the flexibility to build spine-leaf data center fabrics or classical three-tier data center networks. In this mode, the Cisco^® Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) can manage the Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switches.

Core, Aggregation, and gateway roles

The Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switches support line cards that provide a choice of smart buffers, deep buffers, large tables, and high-density, high-speed Ethernet interfaces. These hardware capabilities, along with extensive routing and switching software capabilities, make the Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switches an excellent choice as a core, aggregation, or gateway switch.

End-of-row access layer switch

As the Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switches support high-density, multispeed Ethernet ports, these switches can also be deployed as end-of-row switches providing access connections to blade or rack servers. The Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switches also provide the flexibility to incrementally transition from lower-speed server connections to higher-speed server connections.

Switch components for the Cisco Nexus 9500 series

The Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switch includes the components shown in Figure 3.

Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switch Components

The Cisco Nexus 9500 Series switches support several line cards and fabric modules. The following data sheets describe each family of line cards and fabric modules:

●     Cisco Nexus 9500 Cloud Scale Line Cards and Fabric Modules. URL: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/nexus-9000-series-switches/datasheet-c78-736677.html.

●     Cisco Nexus 9500 R-Series (Deep Buffer) Line Cards and Fabric Modules. URL: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/nexus-9000-series-switches/datasheet-c78-738321.html.

●     Cisco Nexus 9500 Classic Line Cards and Fabric Modules. URL: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/nexus-9000-series-switches/datasheet-c78-741336.html.

Switch chassis for the Cisco Nexus 9500 series

The Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switch has Three Chassis – a 4-Slot, 8-Slot, and 16-Slot Chassis.

Table 2.           Cisco Nexus 9500 series switch chassis specifications

Supervisor modules for the Cisco Nexus 9500 series

A pair of redundant supervisor modules manages all switch operations using a state-synchronized, active-standby model. The supervisor accepts an external clock and supports management through multiple ports – two USB ports, a serial port, and a 10/100/1000-Mbps Ethernet port. All supervisors support Cisco ACI or NX-OS deployments. Redundant supervisors should be of the same type within a chassis.

Table 3.           Cisco Nexus 9500 series supervisor modules specifications

System controller for the Cisco Nexus 9500 platform

A pair of redundant system controllers offloads chassis management functions from the supervisor modules. The controllers are responsible for managing the power supplies and fan trays; they are also the central point for the Gigabit Ethernet Out-of-Band Channel (EOBC) between the supervisors, fabric modules, and line cards.

Table 4.           Cisco Nexus 9500 series system controller specifications

Fabric module for the Cisco Nexus 9500 platform

Each Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Chassis supports up to six fabric modules, which plug in vertically at the back of the chassis behind the fan trays. The Cisco Nexus 9500 line card and fabric module data sheets provide additional information about the various fabric modules.

Fan trays for the Cisco Nexus 9500 platform

The Cisco Nexus 9500 chassis supports two versions of hot-swappable fan trays that are compatible with specific fabric modules. Each fan tray covers two fabric module slots and enables front-to-back air-flow for the entire chassis. An appropriate fabric module blank card should be installed in all empty fabric module slots to ensure proper air-flow and cooling of the chassis.

Table 5.           Fan tray specifications

Cisco Nexus 9500 platform power supply

The Cisco Nexus 9500 platform supports hot-swappable, front-panel-accessible AC, DC, and universal high voltage AC/DC power supplies. The total power budget required for the mix and number of line cards and fabric modules installed in the chassis determines the ability to support power supply redundancy modes – combined, n + 1, n + n, or input-source redundancy.

The 3150W high voltage AC/DC power supply offers two power inputs each of which can provide up to 3150 W of output power. This unique capability offers more flexibility in provisioning power redundancy for the chassis.

Table 6.           Power supply specifications

Table 7.           Ordering information

Note

All part numbers with “=” sign refer to Spare part numbers for ordering.

Warranty

The Cisco Nexus 9500 platform has a 1-year limited hardware warranty. The warranty includes hardware replacement with a 10-day turnaround from receipt of a Return Materials Authorization (RMA).

Cisco environmental sustainability

Information about Cisco’s environmental sustainability policies and initiatives for our products, solutions, operations, and extended operations or supply chain is provided in the “Environment Sustainability” section of Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report.

Reference links to information about key environmental sustainability topics (mentioned in the “Environment Sustainability” section of the CSR Report) are provided in the following table:

Cisco makes the packaging data available for informational purposes only. It may not reflect the most current legal developments, and Cisco does not represent, warrant, or guarantee that it is complete, accurate, or up to date. This information is subject to change without notice.

Service and Support

Cisco offers a wide range of services to help accelerate your success in deploying and optimizing the Cisco Nexus 9500 platform in your data center. These innovative Cisco Services offerings are delivered through a unique combination of people, processes, tools, and partners and are focused on helping you increase operation efficiency and improve your data center network.

Cisco Advanced Services use an architecture-led approach to help you align your data center infrastructure with your business goals and achieve long-term value. Cisco SMARTnet^™ Service helps you resolve mission-critical problems with direct access at any time to Cisco network experts and award-winning resources. With this service, you can take advantage of the Cisco Smart Call Home service, which offers proactive diagnostics and real-time alerts on your Cisco Nexus 9500 platform switch.

Spanning the entire network lifecycle, Cisco Services offerings help increase investment protection, optimize network operations, support migration operations, and strengthen your IT expertise.

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For more information

For more information about the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series, please visit https://www.cisco.com/go/nexus9000.