Cisco Nexus 9232C Switch Data Sheet

Product Overview

The Cisco Nexus^® 9232C Switch is part of Cisco Nexus 9200 platform switches. The Cisco Nexus 9200 platform consists of industry-leading ultra-high-density fixed-configuration data center switches with line-rate Layer 2 and 3 features that support enterprise applications, service provider hosting, and cloud computing environments. These switches support a wide range of port speeds with flexible combinations of 1/10/25/40/50/100-Gbps connectivity in compact form factors. Using the widely deployed industry-leading Cisco^® NX-OS Software operating system, the Cisco Nexus 9200 platform is designed for programmable fabric, which offers the flexibility, mobility, and scale needed by service providers and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and cloud providers. It is also designed for programmable networks, which automate configuration and management for customers who want to take advantage of the DevOps model and tool sets.

The Cisco Nexus 9232C Switch (Figure 1) is a 1-rack-unit (1RU) switch that supports 6.4 terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth and more than 5.1 billion packets per second (bpps) across thirty-two 100-Gbps Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable 28 (QSFP28) ports. Each port on the 9232C can be individually configured into 1x100-Gbps port, 4 x10-Gbps ports, 4 x 25-Gbps ports, 1 x 40-Gbps port, or 2 x 50-Gbps ports.

Features and Benefits

The Cisco Nexus 9232C Switch provides the following features and benefits:

●    High performance and scalability

◦    The platform provides wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching on all ports with up to 6.4 Tbps and over 5.1 bpps of bandwidth.

◦    With up to 30 MB of shared buffer, the platform is an excellent choice for scalable data centers and big data applications. The capability to fine-tune buffer allocation for nondrop queues makes the Cisco Nexus 9200 platform well suited for IP storage designs.

●    Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN)

◦    The platform offers native line-rate VXLAN routing.

◦    The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EVPN) control plane provides scalable multitenancy and host mobility (refer to the document “VXLAN Network with MP-BGP EVPN Control Plane” for more information).

●    Hardware and software high availability

◦    The 64-way equal-cost multipath (ECMP) routing enables the use of Layer 3 fat-tree designs. This feature helps organizations prevent network bottlenecks, increase resiliency, and add capacity with little network disruption.

◦    Patching helps ensure undisruptive upgrades in most cases.

◦    The switches use hot-swappable power-supply units (PSUs) and fans with N+1 redundancy.

●    Purpose-built NX-OS operating system with comprehensive, proven innovations

◦    Open programmability supports built-in DevOps automation tools such as Puppet, Chef, and Ansible.

◦    Cisco NX-API supports for a common programmatic approach across Cisco Nexus switches.

◦    Power-on autoprovisioning (POAP) enables touchless bootup and configuration of the switch, drastically reducing provisioning time.

◦    The onboard Python scripting engine supports automation and remote operations in the data center.

◦    Advanced buffer monitoring reports real-time buffer utilization per port and per queue, which allows organizations to monitor traffic bursts and application traffic patterns.

◦    Complete Layer 3 unicast and multicast routing protocol suites are supported, including BGP, Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Routing Information Protocol Version 2 (RIPv2), Protocol Independent Multicast sparse mode (PIM-SM), Source-Specific Multicast (SSM), and Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP).

◦    Segment routing allows the network to forward Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) packets and perform traffic engineering without Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) traffic engineering (TE). It provides a control-plane alternative for increased network scalability and virtualization.

The Cisco Nexus 9232C offers industry-leading density and performance with flexible port configurations that can support existing fiber cabling (Table 1).

Table 1.         Cisco Nexus 9232C Switch Characteristics

Cisco NX-OS Features and Benefits

The software packaging for the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches offers flexibility and a comprehensive feature set while being consistent with Cisco Nexus access switches. The default system software has a comprehensive Layer 2 security and management feature set. To enable additional functions, including Layer 3 IP unicast and IP multicast routing and Cisco Nexus Data Broker, you must install additional licenses. Table 2 lists the software packaging and licensing available to enable advanced features.

Table 2.         Software Packaging and Licensing

For a complete list of supported features, refer to Cisco Feature Navigator.

Software Requirements

The Cisco Nexus 9200 platform supports the NX-OS operating system.

For the latest software release information and recommendations, please refer to the product bulletin at http://www.cisco.com/go/nexus9000.

Specifications

Table 3 lists the performance and scalability specifications for the Cisco Nexus 9200 platform switches. (Please check the software release notes for feature support information.)

Table 3.         Performance and Scalability Specifications^*

Environmental Properties

Table 4 lists the environmental properties, and Table 5 lists the weight for the Cisco Nexus 9200 platform switches.

Table 4.         Environmental Properties

Table 5.         Weight

Regulatory Standards Compliance

Table 6 summarizes regulatory standards compliance for the Cisco Nexus 9200 platform switches.

Table 6.         Regulatory Standards Compliance: Safety and EMC

Supported Optics Modules

Table 7 lists the optics modules supported.

Table 7.         Optics Support Information

Ordering Information

Table 8 presents ordering information for the Cisco Nexus 9200 platform switches.

Table 8.         Ordering Information

Warranty

The Cisco Nexus 9200 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).

Service and Support

Cisco offers a range of professional, solution, and product support services for each stage of your Cisco Nexus 9200 deployment:

●    Cisco Migration Service for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches: This service helps you migrate from Cisco Catalyst^® 6000 Series Switches to Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches.

●    Cisco Product Support: Support service is available globally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for Cisco software and hardware products and technologies associated with Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches. Enhanced support options delivered by Cisco also include solution support for the Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI^™) platform and Cisco SMARTnet^™ Service and Cisco Smart Net Total Care^™offerings.^*

For more information, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/services.

For More Information

For more information about the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series and latest software release information and recommendations, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/nexus9000.