Cisco Nexus 9500 Cloud-Scale Line Cards and Fabric Modules Data Sheet

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Product overview

The Cisco Nexus^® 9500 switching platform (Figure 1) offers three modular chassis:

●     Cisco Nexus 9500 4-slot switch

●     Cisco Nexus 9500 8-slot switch

●     Cisco Nexus 9500 16-slot switch

Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Cloud-Scale Switch Chassis

The Cisco Nexus 9500 Series modular switches support a comprehensive selection of cloud-scale line cards and fabric modules that provide 1-, 10-, 25-, 40-, 50-, 100-, 200-, and 400-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. A cloud scale line card provides up to 6.4 Terabits per second (Tbps) per slot and each cloud scale fabric module provides up to 1.6 Tbps to each line card slot. Using these cloud-scale line cards the Cisco Nexus 9500 Series switches can be configured with up to.

1.     192 400-Gigabit Ethernet ports (or)

2.     384 200-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

Note:       This data sheet specifies hardware capabilities only. Please refer to Cisco ACI or Cisco NX-OS software release notes and appropriate feature documentation for more details.

Cisco Nexus 9500 platform cloud-scale line cards

The Cisco Nexus 9500 platform supports a rich selection of hot-swappable multispeed cloud-scale line cards and fabric modules optimized for data-center deployments. These cloud-scale line cards and fabric modules, built using Cisco^® cloud-scale ASICs, provide the ideal foundation for large scalable data centers. The Cisco clouds-scale ASICs provide enhanced performance and features that are required to meet the evolving needs of the world’s largest cloud-scale data centers. These ASICs not only support foundational L2/L3 networking capabilities but also support enhanced capabilities such as policy-based fabric architectures (ACI or VXLAN), smart buffering, integrated line rate security, and real-time streaming telemetry over multispeed Ethernet ports.

The latest Cisco^® 400-Gigabit cloud-scale ASICs also support Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6) and enhanced streaming telemetry capabilities.

Table 1.           Cisco Nexus 9500 cloud-scale line cards

Table 2.           Cisco Nexus 9500 cloud-scale line card use-case summary

Table 3.           Cisco Nexus 9500 cloud-scale line card specifications

Select EX, FX, and GX line cards can be installed together in the same Cisco Nexus 9500 chassis. In such a configuration, the chassis supports a maximum of four fabric modules and any additional fabric modules installed will be powered down. Any features or capabilities that require more than four fabric modules will be automatically disabled in such a configuration.

Cisco Nexus 9500 cloud-scale platform fabric modules and performance

The Cisco Nexus 9500 platform is designed as a Clos fabric that interconnects each line card directly with each rear-mounted fabric module. All traffic between the line cards is load balanced across all fabric modules, providing optimal bandwidth distribution within the chassis. This load-balancing capability provides enhanced system reliability and redundancy. The switch continues to operate even in the event of a loss of a fabric module, albeit at a lower capacity, as the remaining fabric modules continue to provide switching capacity to the line cards.

The Cisco Nexus 9500 Cloud Scale platform supports the following fabric modules:

●     4-slot and 8-slot FM-G fabric modules that provide up to 1.6 Tbps capacity per line card slot.

●     8-slot and 16-slot FM-E2 fabric modules that provide up to 800 Gbps capacity per line card slot.

●     4-slot, 8-slot, and 16-slot FM-E fabric modules that provide up to 800 Gbps capacity per line card slot.

These fabric modules provide upgradability and investment protection for the Cisco Nexus 9500 Series chassis. All fabric modules installed in a chassis should be of the same type.

Table 4.           Cisco Nexus 9500 cloud-scale line cards and FM-G Fabric Module Compatibility

Table 5.           Cisco Nexus 9500 cloud-scale line cards and FM-E/E2 Fabric Modules Compatibility

The Cisco Nexus 9500 Cloud Scale line cards support several forwarding templates to efficiently allocate onboard memory for varying deployment scenarios.

Note:       This data sheet specifies hardware capabilities only. Please refer to Cisco ACI or Cisco NX-OS software release notes and appropriate feature documentation for more details.

Table 6.           Cisco Nexus 9500 Cloud-Scale Line Cards: Product Specifications – Performance and Scale¹

Supported optics modules

Each Cisco Nexus 9500 cloud-scale line card supports an extensive set of optic modules. The Cisco Optics Compatibility Matrix (https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/home) provides the list of optics supported on each line card.

Mechanical specifications

Table 7.           Cisco Nexus 9500 Cloud-Scale Line Cards: Product Specifications – Mechanical

Table 8.           Cisco Nexus 9500 FM-G Cloud-Scale Fabric Modules: Product Specifications – Mechanical

Table 9.           Cisco Nexus 9500 Cloud-Scale FM-E/E2 Fabric Modules: Product Specifications – Mechanical

Regulatory standards compliance

Table 10.       Regulatory standards compliance: safety and EMC

Ordering information

Table 11.       Cisco Nexus 9500 Cloud-Scale Line Cards: ordering information

Table 12.       Cisco Nexus 9500 Cloud-Scale Fabric Modules 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 operational 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.

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