Cisco Nexus 9000. Series Switches. Hardware innovation. Three key decisions. Spine Switches. Leaf Switches. Modular spine line cards.
Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Exploring the Industry's Leading Data Center Switching Platform: The Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Hardware innovation Three key decisions Spine Switches Leaf Switches Modular spine line cards Modular leaf line lards Additional information Learn more Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches The Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Engineered from the ground up for the automation, performance, and simplicity that your team needs to stay ahead of the ever increasing demands of software developers and applications, the Cisco Nexus® 9000 combines the most programmable network operating systems with the world's highest performing ASICs so your team can deliver amazing experiences faster than your competition. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. HOME Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Hardware innovation Three key decisions Spine Switches Leaf Switches Modular spine line cards Modular leaf line cards Additional information Learn more © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Spine switches Leaf switches Servers Storage Network core and data center interconnect Optimize your Architecture Data center networks around the world are shifting to spine-and-leaf1,2 architecture to simplify scaling bandwidth, deliver consistently lower latency and reduce overall costs. Unlike traditional 3-tier networks, every leaf (access) switch connects to every spine (aggregation) switch and every spine switch only connects to the leaf switches. Every connection to the data center network is made through a leaf switch. To increase overall bandwidth, all you need to do is add another spine switch. To add access ports, simply add another leaf switch. Every leaf is only two hops away from every other leaf for consistently low latency. And every link is always active, so your network delivers the maximum bandwidth with the fewest switches. 1 ACI mode is designed for spine-and-leaf only and requires the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC). 2While this guide focuses on the spine-and-leaf architecture, the Nexus 9000 and 3000 can be configured for either spine-and-leaf or traditional 2-tier and 3-tier architectures in NX-OS mode. HOME Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Hardware innovation Three key decisions Spine Switches Leaf Switches Modular spine line cards Modular leaf line cards Additional information Learn more Hardware innovation All networking platforms depend upon their network processors and the other microchips on which they run. That's why we have some of the world's best Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) designers. We are committed to driving the industry forward when we see that customer needs aren't being met by merchant silicon. A great example of this are the Cloud Scale ASICs. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. HOME Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Hardware innovation Three key decisions Which network operating system is right for you? Which leaf switches do you need? What is the best spine switch to standardize on? Spine Switches Leaf Switches Modular spine line cards Modular leaf line lards Additional information Learn more Three key decisions Your organization's data center architecture is unique. When you consider your combination of network administrators, applications, software developers, users, computing, storage, and public cloud usage, no other organization is an exact match for your needs. That's the reason we've built such broad capabilities into the Cisco Nexus 9000 portfolio. As you consider how it could best meet the needs of your organization, there are three key decisions you'll need to make. Which network operating system is right for you? Both Cisco ACI1 and NX-OS2 have their benefits. You will need to pick one as your spine-and-leaf operating system. Cisco ACI1 The ACI1 network operating system dramatically simplifies SDN and delivers endto-end policy automation by taking advantage of Cisco's Cloud Scale ASICs that connect physical and logical networks. NX-OS2 The industry's most programmable network operating system with open APIs. With over 50,000 customers, NX-OS is the world's industryleading network operating system for data centers. Which one is right for you? It really comes down to your people. ACI1 makes automation dramatically easier. Your people won't have to learn tools like Ansible, Puppet, or Chef. They'll have a single-pane of glass for managing physical and virtual networks, and they'll be able to deploy and maintain applications faster and easier. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 1 ACI mode is designed for spine-and-leaf only and requires the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC). 2While this guide focuses on the spine-and-leaf architecture, the Nexus 9000 and 3000 can be configured for either spine-and-leaf or traditional 2-tier and 3-tier architectures in NX-OS mode. HOME Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Hardware innovation Three key decisions Which network operating system is right for you? Which leaf switches do you need? What is the best spine switch to standardize on? Spine Switches Leaf Switches Modular spine line cards Modular leaf line cards Additional information Learn more © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Which leaf switches do you need? You will likely need many different leaf switches to meet your computing, storage, and core networking needs. If you are new to the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches, we recommend that you focus on switches with Cloud Scale ASICs. Scale Cloud Scale ASICs Built on next-generation process technology (16 nm), our Cloud Scale ASICs deliver significant advantages over merchant silicon: Fundamentally faster due to 16nm processes Substantially more features in hardware Higher performing buffers Line rate encryption and analytics Cisco ACI1 technology As the industry moves toward Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and infrastructure as code, there is no industry standard for combining physical and virtual networks. We invented Cisco ACI1 to connect physical and virtual networks for deploying policy-based automation end-to-end. FCoE and Fibre Channel While all Cisco Nexus 9000 leaf switches support Fibre Channelover-Ethernet (FCoE), only the N9K-93180YC-FX can be configured for Fibre Channel ports to connect to your SAN.) What is the best spine switch to standardize on? Unlike leaf switches, you will want to pick a single spine switch to standardize on. Key considerations include: Total spine bandwidth In most cases, you will start with two spine switches and have the option to expand to up to 6 spines.3 Leaf uplinks You'll want to make sure your spine is compatible with all your leaves' uplinks. You'll need a modular spine if want to have both QSFP28 and QSFP+ uplinks. Operating system You'll want to make sure your operating system supports all of your spine and leaf switches. 1 ACI mode is designed for spine-and-leaf only and requires the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC). 3We strongly recommend you start with at least two spine switches. You will also likely be limited to six spine switches because that is the most common number of uplinks for leaf switches. The range shown here is the total maximum system bandwidth for two to six spine switches. HOME Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Hardware innovation Three key decisions Spine Switches Modular spine switches Fixed configuration spine switches Leaf Switches Modular spine line cards Modular leaf line cards Additional information Learn more Spine Switches Modular spine switches Total spine bandwidth: 120360 Tbps3 maximum N9K-C9516-FM-E2 · 16-slot chassis · Cisco ACITM1 and Cisco® NX-OS2 modes · Up to 576 40/100G or 2,304 10G ports Total spine bandwidth: 60180 Tbps3 maximum N9K-C9508-FM-E · 8-slot chassis · Cisco ACI1 and NX-OS2 modes · Up to 288 40/100G or 1,152 10G Ports Total spine bandwidth: 3090 Tbps3 maximum N9K-C9504-FM-E · 4-slot chassis · Cisco ACI1 and NX-OS2 modes · Up to 144 40/100G or 576 10G Ports Fixed configuration spine switches Total spine bandwidth: 2472 Tbps3 maximum N9K-9364C Scale · Cisco ACI1 and NX-OS2 modes · 64 ports 40/100G QSPF28 ports · 2 fixed 1/10G SFP+ ports · 16 ports of MACsec line rate encryption Total spine bandwidth: 1442 Tbps3 maximum N9K-9336C-FX2 Scale · Cisco ACI1 and NX-OS2 modes · 36 x 1/10/25/40/100-Gbps QSFP28 ports · All ports support MACsec line rate encryption N9K-9236C · NX-OS2 only · 36 line-rate 10/25/40/100G QSPF285 ports Total spine bandwidth: 618 Tbps3 maximum N9K-9336PQ · Cisco ACI1 only · 36 line-rate 40 GBE QSFP+ ports · 16 ports of MACsec line rate encryption © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 1 ACI mode is designed for spine-and-leaf only and requires the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC). 2While this guide focuses on the spine-and-leaf architecture, the Nexus 9000 and 3000 can be configured for either spine-and-leaf or traditional 2-tier and 3-tier architectures in NX-OS mode. 3We strongly recommend you start with at least two spine switches. You will also likely be limited to six spine switches because that is the most common number of uplinks for leaf switches. The range shown here is the total maximum system bandwidth for two to six spine switches. HOME Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Hardware innovation Three key decisions Spine Switches Leaf Switches Fixed configuration leaf switches Modular spine line cards Modular leaf line cards Additional information Learn more Leaf Switches Fixed configuration leaf switches For NX-OS2 fixed copper access, you'll need to use the Cisco ACI enabled leaf switches. Cisco ACI1 and NX-OS2 modes with line rate encryption4 Fiber access with MACsec and 100G uplinks N9K-9336C-FX2 Scale · 36 x 1/10/25/40/100-Gbps QSFP28 ports · Configure each port for access or uplinks N9K-93240YC-FX2 Scale · 48 x 1/10/25-Gbps ports · 12 x 40/100-Gbps QSFP28 uplinks N9K-93180C-FX Scale · 48 x 10/25-Gbps or 8/16/32-Gbps Fibre Channel QSFP28 ports · 6 x 40/100-Gbps QSFP28 uplinks Copper access with MACsec and 100G uplinks N9K-93108TC-FX Scale · 48 x 10GBASE-T ports · 6 x 40/100-Gbps QSFP28 uplinks N9K-9348GC-FXP Scale · 48 x 100M/1G BASE-T ports · 4 x 1/10/25-Gbps SFP28 uplinks and 2 x 40/100-Gbps QSFP28 uplinks © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 1 ACI mode is designed for spine-and-leaf only and requires the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC). 2While this guide focuses on the spine-and-leaf architecture, the Nexus 9000 and 3000 can be configured for either spine-and-leaf or traditional 2-tier and 3-tier architectures in NX-OS mode. 4 If you are considering using the Nexus 9500 as a leaf switch, the N9K-X9788TC-FX offers line rate encryption in NX-OS mode. HOME Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Hardware innovation Three key decisions Spine Switches Leaf Switches Fixed configuration leaf switches Modular spine line cards Modular leaf line cards Additional information Learn more © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco ACI1 and NX-OS2 modes Fiber access with 100G uplinks N9K-93180LC-EX Scale · 24 x 40/50-Gbps QSFP28 ports · 6 x 40/100-Gbps QSFP28 uplinks N9K-93180YC-EX Scale · 48 x 10/25-Gbps QSFP28 ports · 6 x 40/100-Gbps QSFP28 uplinks Fiber access with 40G uplinks N9K-9332PQ · 32 x 40-Gbps QSFP+ ports · Configure each port for access or uplinks N9K-9396PX · 48 x 1/10-Gbps SFP+ ports · 12 x 40-Gbps QSFP+ uplinks N9K-9372PX-E · 48 x 1/10-Gbps SFP+ ports · 6 x 40-Gbps QSFP+ uplinks Copper access with 100G uplinks N9K-93108TC-EX Scale · 48 x 1/10GBASE-T ports · 6 x 40/100-Gbps QSFP28 uplinks Copper access with 40G uplinks N9K-93120TX · 96 x 1/10GBASE-T ports · 6 x 40-Gbps QSFP+ uplinks N9K-9396TX · 48 x 1/10GBASE-T ports · 12 x 40-Gbps QSFP+ uplinks N9K-9372TX-E · 48 x 1/10GBASE-T ports · 6 x 40-Gbps QSFP+ uplinks Fiber access with 100G uplinks N9K-92304QC Scale · 56 x 40-Gbps QSFP+ports · 8 x 100-Gbps QSFP28 uplinks N9K-9236C Scale · 36 x 1/10/25/40/50/100G QSFP28 ports · All ports can be configured for access or uplink N9K-92300YC Scale · 48 x 10/25-Gbps SFP+ ports · 18 x 100-Gbps QSFP28 uplinks N9K-92160YC-X Scale · 48 x 10/25-Gbps SFP+ ports · 6 x QSFP28 ports (4 of the QSFP+ ports are 100Gbps capable) 1 ACI mode is designed for spine-and-leaf only and requires the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC). 2While this guide focuses on the spine-and-leaf architecture, the Nexus 9000 and 3000 can be configured for either spine-and-leaf or traditional 2-tier and 3-tier architectures in NX-OS mode. HOME Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Hardware innovation Three key decisions Spine Switches Leaf Switches Modular spine line cards Cisco AC and NX-OSI2 modes NX-OS2 mode only Modular leaf line cards Additional information Learn more © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Modular spine line cards Cisco ACI1 and NX-OSI2 modes 1/10/25/40/ 50/100G QSFP28 uplinks Line rate encryption (+170 byte packets) Line rate for all packets (no encryption) Uplinks N9K-X9732C-EX Scale N9K-X9736C-FX Scale · 32 uplinks · 36 uplinks · 3.6 Tbps · 3.6 Tbps · 160 MB buffer capacity · 160 MB buffer capacity NX-OS2 mode only Line rate for +250 byte packets Line rate encryption (+170 byte packets) N9K-X9432C-S N9K-X9732C-FX Scale · 32 uplinks · 32 uplinks · 32 MB buffer capacity · 3.6 Tbps · 160 MB buffer capacity Deep buffers N9K-X9636C-R Line rate for all packets (no encryption) · 36 uplinks N9K-X9736C-EX Scale · 24 GB buffer capacity · 36 uplinks · 3.6 Tbps · 160 MB buffer capacity N9K-X9636C-RX · 36 uplinks · 16 GB buffer capacity NX-OS2 mode only 40 GPS QSFP + uplinks Line rate for all packets N9K-X9636PQ Line rate for +200 byte packets Deep buffers N9K-X9432PQ N9K-X9636Q-R · 36 uplinks · 32 uplinks · 36 uplinks · 36 MB buffer capacity · 4-slot and 8-slot chassis only · 24 MB buffer capacity · 24 GB buffer capacity 1 ACI mode is designed for spine-and-leaf only and requires the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC). 2While this guide focuses on the spine-and-leaf architecture, the Nexus 9000 and 3000 can be configured for either spine-and-leaf or traditional 2-tier and 3-tier architectures in NX-OS mode. HOME Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Hardware innovation Three key decisions Spine Switches Leaf Switches Modular spine line cards Modular leaf line cards Modular leaf line cards for the Cisco Nexus 9500 Additional information Learn more Modular leaf line cards Modular leaf line cards for the Cisco Nexus 9500 NX-OS2 mode only There is also the option to use the Nexus 9500 as a leaf switch. This is usually only needed for data centers with tens of thousands of servers. Fiber access, 100G uplinks N9K-X97160YC-EX · 48 x 1/10/25-Gbps SFP+ ports · 4-port 100-Gpbs QSFP28 uplink Fiber access, 40G uplinks N9K-X9536PQ · 36 x 40-Gbps QSFP+ ports · 1.5:1 oversubscription · All ports can be configured for access or uplinks N9K-X9564PX · 48 x 1/10-Gbps SFP+ ports · 4 x 40 Gigabit Ethernet QSFP+ uplinks N9K-X9464PX · 48 x 1/10-Gbps SFP+ ports · 4 x 40 Gigabit Ethernet QSFP+ uplinks Copper access, 100G uplinks N9K-X9788TC-FX · 48-port 1 and 10GBASE-T · 4-port 40/100-Gbps QSFP28 uplinks · Line rate encryption Copper access, 40G uplinks N9K-X9564TX · 48-port 1 and 10GBASE-T Line rate for all packets · 4-port 40-Gbps QSFP+ uplinks N9K-X9464TX2 · 48-port 1 and 10GBASE-T · Line rate for +200 byte packets · 4-port 40-Gbps QSFP+ uplinks © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. HOME Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Hardware innovation Three key decisions Spine Switches Leaf Switches Modular spine line cards Modular leaf line cards Additional information Learn more Additional information 1. Cisco ACI mode is designed for spine-and-leaf only and requires the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC). 2. While this guide focuses on the spine-and-leaf architecture, the Cisco Nexus 9000 and 3000 can be configured for either spine-and-leaf or traditional 2-tier and 3-tier architectures in NX-OS mode. 3. We strongly recommend you start with at least two spine switches. You will also likely be limited to six spine switches because that is the most common number of uplinks for leaf switches. The range shown here is the total maximum system bandwidth for two to six spine switches. 4. If you are considering using the Cisco Nexus 9500 as a leaf switch, the N9K-X9788TC-FX offers line rate encryption in NX-OS mode. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. HOME Nexus 9000 guide Cisco public Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches Hardware innovation Three key decisions Spine Switches Leaf Switches Modular spine line cards Modular Leaf Line Cards Additional information Learn more Learn more Do you need really fast switches? Switches with a latency of less than 250750 nanoseconds? If you do, then the Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches are your ideal leaf switches, and, like the Cisco Nexus 9000, they run NX-OS2 Contact an Account Manager for more information. 1.800.800.0014 www.connection.com/Cisco 2While this guide focuses on the spine-and-leaf architecture, the Nexus 9000 and 3000 can be configured for either spine-and-leaf or traditional 2-tier and 3-tier architectures in NX-OS mode. 843981-0119 HOME © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: https://www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R) C82-740873-00 07/18Adobe InDesign CC 13.0 (Macintosh) Adobe PDF Library 15.0; modified using iText 2.1.7 by 1T3XT