Cisco Nexus 9300-GX2 Series Fixed Switches Data Sheet

 

Product highlights

In the evolving landscape of applications, there is an increased bandwidth requirement due to emergence of AI-powered applications. Large cloud and data-center networking teams require a flexible, reliable solution that efficiently manages, troubleshoots, and analyzes their IT infrastructure. They need security, automation, visibility, analytics, and assurance. Equipped to support this next-generation cloud architecture, the Cisco Nexus^® 9300-GX2 series switches are based on Cisco Cloud Scale technology.

The Cisco Nexus 9300-GX2 series addresses the need for high-performance, power-efficient, compact switches in the networking infrastructure. These switches are designed to support 50G, 100G, 200G, and 400G fabrics for next-generation leaf and spine designs and IP storage fabrics. The platform is built with backward-compatible 400G optical interface Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable–Double Density (QSFP-DD) to transparently migrate existing data center fabrics from 40-Gbps and 100-Gbps speeds to 400 Gbps; it also offers various lower port speeds and densities, including 10, 25, 50, and 200 Gbps, using breakouts. Cisco provides two modes of operation for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches. Organizations can deploy Cisco^® Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI^®) or Cisco NX-OS mode.

Switch model

Table 1.        Cisco Nexus 9300-GX2 series switches

The Cisco Nexus 9364D-GX2A is a 2-Rack-Unit (2RU) switch that supports 51.2 Tbps of bandwidth and 8.35 bpps across 64 fixed 400G QSFP-DD ports and two fixed 1/10G SFP+ ports (Figure 1). QSFP-DD ports also support native 200G (QSFP56), 100G (QSFP28) and 40G (QSFP+). Each port can also support 4x10G, 4x25G, 4x50G, 4x100G, and 2x200G breakouts. The first 16 ports, marked in green, are capable of wire-rate MACsec encryption. The switch is best suited to support massive scale-out fabrics as a compact, high-density spine.

Cisco Nexus 9364D-GX2A switch

The Cisco Nexus 9348D-GX2A is a 2-Rack-Unit (2RU) switch that supports 38.4 Tbps of bandwidth and 8.35 bpps across 48 fixed 400G QSFP-DD ports and two fixed 1/10G SFP+ ports (Figure 2). QSFP-DD ports also support native 200G (QSFP56), 100G (QSFP28) and 40G (QSFP+). Each port can also support 4x10G, 4x25G, 4x50G, 4x100G, and 2x200G breakouts. All 48 ports are capable of wire-rate MACsec encryption. The switch is best suited to support massive scale-out fabrics as a compact, high-density spine.

Cisco Nexus 9348D-GX2A switch

The Cisco Nexus 9332D-GX2B is a compact form-factor 1-Rack-Unit (1RU) switch that supports 25.6 Tbps of bandwidth and 4.17 bpps across 32 fixed 400G QSFP-DD ports and two fixed 1/10G SFP+ ports (Figure 3). QSFP-DD ports also support native 200G (QSFP56), 100G (QSFP28) and 40G (QSFP+). Each port can also support 4x10G, 4x25G, 4x50G, 4x100G, and 2x200G breakouts. The last eight ports, marked in green, are capable of wire-rate MACsec encryption.

Cisco Nexus 9332D-GX2B switch

Features and benefits

The Cisco Nexus 9300-GX2 series switches provide the following features and benefits:

●      Architectural flexibility

Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches support Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI), Cisco NX-OS VXLAN EVPN, Cisco IP Fabric for Media, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker, and IP routed or Ethernet switched Layer-2 fabrics using a comprehensive set of unicast and multicast IPv6/IPv4 and Ethernet protocols.

◦    Purpose-built Cisco NX-OS Software operating system with comprehensive, proven innovations. The operating system is modular, with a dedicated process for each routing protocol: a design that isolates faults while increasing availability.

◦    Industry-leading Cisco Software-Defined Networking (SDN) solution with Cisco ACI support. Cisco ACI is a holistic, intent-driven architecture with centralized automation and policy-based application profiles.

◦    Support for standards-based VXLAN EVPN fabrics, inclusive of hierarchical multisite support (Refer to VXLAN network with MP-BGP EVPN control plane for more information.)

◦    Three-tier BGP architectures, enabling horizontal, nonblocking IPv6 network fabrics at web scale.

◦    Comprehensive protocol support for Layer-3 (v4 and v6) unicast and multicast routing protocol suites, 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 (SR and SRv6) allows the network to forward multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) packets and to engineer traffic without Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) Traffic Engineering (TE). It provides a control-plane alternative for increased network scalability and virtualization. Cisco IP Fabric for Media helps you migrate from an SDI router to an IP-based infrastructure. In an IP-based infrastructure, a single cable has the capacity to carry multiple bidirectional traffic flows and can support different flow sizes without requiring changes to the physical infrastructure.

◦    Nexus Dashboard Data Broker provides customers with complete observability into their network and solution(s) that can help them to identify and mitigate security threats, realize and remediate performance bottlenecks, adhere to data compliance, and have insight into capacity planning operations.

●      Extensive programmability

◦    Day-0 automation through Power-On Auto Provisioning (POAP), drastically reducing provisioning time.

◦    Industry-leading integrations for leading DevOps configuration management applications, such as Ansible. Extensive native YANG and industry-standard OpenConfig model support through RESTCONF/NETCONF/gNMI.

◦    REST API interacting with Data Management Engine (DME).

◦    Model-driven telemetry, which enhances network observability.

◦    Third-party application hosting using Cisco Application Framework (CAF).

●      High scalability, flexibility, and security

◦    Flexible forwarding tables support up to two million shared entries on Cisco Nexus 9300-GX2 models.

◦    IEEE 802.1ae MAC security (MACsec)1 capability on selected ports of 9300-GX2 models allows traffic encryption at the physical layer and provides secure server, border leaf, and leaf-to-spine connectivity.

●      AI/ML networking

Cisco Nexus 9300 GX2 Series Fixed Switches support innovative congestion management and flow control algorithms along with the right latency and telemetry to meet the design requirements of AI/ML fabrics.

◦    Priority Flow Control (PFC) is a key capability supported on Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches that prevents Ethernet frame drops by signaling, controlling, and managing Ethernet flows along the path by sending pause frames to appropriate senders.

◦    The platform also supports Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN), which provides end-to-end notification per IP flow by marking packets that experienced congestion, without dropping traffic. The platform is capable of tracking ECN statistics, including the number of marked packets that have experienced congestion.

◦    The platform offers lossless transport for Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) with the support of Data Center Bridging (DCB) protocols.

◦    Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS) reserves bandwidth per priority class in network contention situations.

◦    Data Center Bridging Exchange Protocol (DCBX) can discover and exchange priority and bandwidth information with endpoints.

◦    Weighted Random Early Detection (WRED) is a congestion-avoidance technique that allows Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches to detect and react to congestion in the network by marking flows that could cause congestion.

◦    The platform offers Cisco’s innovative intelligent buffer management, which offers the capability to distinguish mice and elephant flows and apply different queue-management schemes to them based on their network forwarding requirements in the event of link congestion.

◦    Approximate Fair Dropping (AFD) with Elephant Trap (ETRAP). By using ETRAP, AFD distinguishes long-lived elephant flows from short-lived mice flows. ETRAP measures the byte counts of incoming flows and compares this against the user-defined ETRAP threshold. After a flow crosses the threshold, it becomes an elephant flow.

◦    Dynamic Packet Prioritization (DPP) provides the capability of separating mice flows and elephant flows into two different queues so that buffer space can be allocated to them independently.

●      Hardware and software high availability

◦    Virtual Port-Channel (vPC) technology provides Layer-2 multipathing through the elimination of Spanning Tree Protocol (STP).

◦    Can do fabric link in the VXLAN environment, eliminating the need for peer-to-peer vPC. The 128-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.

◦    Software Maintenance Upgrade (SMU) contains fixes for a specific defect. They provide a quick resolution of critical issues.

◦    In-Service Software Upgrades (ISSU)s allows upgrades of device software while the switch continues to forward traffic. ISSU reduces or eliminates the downtime typically caused by software upgrades.

◦    The switches use hot-swappable Power-Supply Units (PSUs) and fans with N+1 redundancy.

●      Cisco Nexus Dashboard

◦    Cisco Nexus Dashboard is a platform that transforms data-center and cloud network operations through simplicity, automation, and analytics. Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC), Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights (NDI), Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator (NDO), and Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker (NDDB) are integrated as services into Cisco Nexus Dashboard.

◦    Cisco Nexus Dashboard is included with all Cisco Nexus 9000 switch tiered licenses. Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller requires Cisco Data Center Networking (DCN) Essentials license, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator requires Cisco DCN Advantage, and Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights requires Cisco DCN Premier or Cisco DCN Day-2 Ops add-on license.

Specifications

Table 2.        Cisco Nexus 9300 ACI spine switch specifications

Cisco Nexus 9300-GX2 series switches support NX-OS and also ACI spine-and-leaf functionality for fully flexible deployments. Table 3 lists the switch mode support.

Table 3.        Switch mode support

Performance and scalability

Table 4 lists the performance and scalability specifications for the Cisco Nexus 9300-GX2 switches.

Table 4.        Performance and scalability specifications

Table 5.        Weight

Regulatory standards compliance

Table 6 summarizes regulatory standards compliance for the Cisco Nexus 9300-GX2 switches.

Table 6.        Regulatory standards compliance: safety and EMC

Supported optics pluggable

For details on the optical modules available and the minimum software release required for each supported optical module, visit here.

Software licensing

The software packaging for the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series offers flexibility and a comprehensive feature set. 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. The licensing guide illustrates the software packaging and licensing available to enable advanced features. For the latest software release information and recommendations, refer to the product bulletin at https://www.cisco.com/go/nexus9000.

Ordering information

Table 7 presents ordering information for the Cisco Nexus 9300-GX2 series switches.

Table 7.             Ordering information

Warranty

The Cisco Nexus 9300 switch 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:

Reference links to product-specific environmental sustainability information that is mentioned in relevant sections of this data sheet are provided in the following tables:

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 9300 switch in your data center. The 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 uses 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.

Cisco Capital

Flexible payment solutions to help you achieve your objectives

Cisco Capital^® makes it easier to get the right technology to achieve your objectives, enable business transformation and help you stay competitive. We can help you reduce the total cost of ownership, conserve capital, and accelerate growth. In more than 100 countries, our flexible payment solutions can help you acquire hardware, software, services and complementary third-party equipment in easy, predictable payments. Learn more.

For more information

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

Document history