The Cisco Nexus product portfolio is a primary component of the Cisco Unified Fabric pillar of the Cisco Data Center architecture. These products are designed to meet the stringent requirements of the next-generation data center.
The Cisco Nexus product portfolio of switches offers these advantages:
Transport that can navigate the transition to multispeed Gigabit Ethernet and unified fabric.
Architectural change management for virtualization, Web 2.0 applications, and cloud computing.
Real-time network visibility for capacity planning, security, and debugging.
Operational continuity to meet your need for an environment where system availability is assumed and maintenance windows are rare or nonexistent.
All Cisco Nexus Series Switches run Cisco NX-OS Software. Cisco NX-OS is designed specifically for the data center and is engineered for high availability, scalability, and flexibility.
The Cisco Data Center family also includes Cisco MDS Series Switches and Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) products.
Overview of the Cisco Nexus Data Center Products. The 3000 and 9300 series are secure, scalable, and have high-speed connectivity. The 9400 and 9500 series have a rich feature set with extensive telemetry. The 9800 and 6000 series have automated operations, observability, and assurance.
Cisco 6000 Series Switches
Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric is a cloud-managed vertical stack solution consisting of purpose-built hardware, software, a cloud controller, Day 2 operations, automation, and Cisco support. When the Cisco 6000 Series Switches arrive on site and you deploy them, they automatically connect to the cloud. From there, the cloud controller claims and provisions them with a zero-touch plug-and-play approach.
Two Cisco 6000 Series switches. One is the Cisco H F 6100 32 D. It has 4 ports of 100 and 400 Gigs open paren 16 ports of 100 Gigs via breakout close paren and 60 ports of 10, 25, and 50 Gigs. The other switch is a Cisco H F 6100 32 D with 32 ports of 100 and 400 Gigs and 128 ports of 100 Gigs via a 400 to 100 breakout.
Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Modular Switches
Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches include modular and fixed-port switches in these families:
Cisco Nexus 9400 Series modular switches provide Cisco NX-OS or Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) spine functionality:
Eight expansion slots support 64 ports of 400G, or 128 ports of 200G, or 176 ports of 10G, 25G, and 50G.
MACsec capability on all ports.
Modular Cisco Nexus 9500 Series switches provide a highly available, resilient data center platform with great performance and scalability:
They are four, eight, and sixteen slot chassis.
Line cards support 1-, 10-, 25-, 40-, 50-, 100-, 200-, and 400-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.
Modular Cisco Nexus 9800 Series Switches are dual supervisor, resilient data-center switches:
Available with four-slot or eight-slot chassis.
Line cards support 10-, 25-, 100-, and 400-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.
Overview of three Cisco Nexus 9000 series switches. Begin list. 1. Cisco Nexus 9408 optimized for 100 Gig, 200 Gig, and 400 Gig N X O S or A C I Leaf or A C I Spine modes. 2. Cisco Nexus 9500. It comes in a 4, 8, and 16 slot chassis. Optimized for 1 Gig through 400 Gig N X OS or A C I Spine modes. 3. Cisco Nexus 9800. It comes in a 4 and 8 slot chassis. Very high density of 400 Gig and 100 Gig ports. 800 Gig ready. N X O S or A C I Spine modes.
Cisco Nexus 9500 and 9800 are highly modular with a zero service-loss architecture and redundant supervisors for core, distribution, or spine layers.
Cisco Nexus 9400 Series Switches deliver high density 100-, 200-, and 400-Gigabit Ethernet in a compact form factor.
Cisco Nexus 9300 Series Fixed Switches
Cisco Nexus 9300 fixed switches provide multispeed Gigabit Ethernet connectivity in 1 or 2 rack unit form factor. The switches support Cisco NX-OS or ACI mode.
Diagram of Cisco Nexus 9300 series fixed switches separated into 1 rack unit and 2 rack unit form factors. Starting with 1 rack units, the 9336 C F X 2 switch has 36 ports of 100 Gigs. The 93180 Y C F X has 48 ports of 1, 10, and 25 Gigabytes per second of fiber and 6 ports at 40 and 100 Gigabytes per second of Q S F P 28. Both switches can be configured in Cisco N X O S or A C I leaf modes. The 93600 C D G X switch has 28 ports of 40 Gigs and 100 Gigs and 8 ports of 400 Gigs. The 9316 D G X has 16 ports of 400 Gigs. The 9332 D H 2 R and 9332 D G X 2 G have 32 ports of 400 Gigs. These switches can be configured in Cisco N X OS, A C I Leaf, or A C I Spine modes. The following switches are 2 rack units. The 9364 C H 1 has 64 ports of 100 Gigs. The 9348 D G X 2 A has 48 ports of 400 Gigs. The 9364 D G X 2 A has 64 ports of 400 Gigs. These switches can be configured in Cisco N X OS, A C I Leaf, or A C I Spine modes.
Cisco Nexus 9300 top of rack (ToR) switches deliver high-performance, high-density multispeed Gigabit Ethernet. The switches are deployed in enterprise-class data center server access layer and smaller-scale, midmarket data center aggregation deployments.
Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches
Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches offer low-latency, highly programmable, high-density switches. You can use them also for general-purpose deployments, high-performance computing (HPC), high-frequency trading (HFT), massively scalable data center (MSDC), and cloud networks.
Note
Features such as Active Latency Monitoring and Active Buffer Monitoring make these compact fixed switches excellent also for high-frequency trading and online banking environments, video streaming, and online games.
The figure displays some switches in the Cisco Nexus 3000 family.
Diagram of Cisco Nexus 3000 series switches. The 3100 V has 48 ports of 1 gig and 10 gigs and 6 ports of 40 gigs and 100 gigs. The 3232 C switch has 32 ports of 10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 gigs. The 3432 D S has 32 ports of 400 gigs. The 3464 C has 64 ports of 40 and 100 gigs and 2 ports of 10 gigs. The 34180 Y C has 48 ports of 10 and 25 gigs and 64 ports of 40 and 100 gigs. The 3636 C R has 36 ports of 10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 gigs.
Switches from this series always come in a compact 1RU form factor but have many flavors. For example, the Cisco Nexus 3636C-FX2 switch (for the data center spine) offers 36 ports that can support speeds from 10 to 100 gigabits. The Cisco Nexus 3432D-S switch offers even faster speeds with 32 400-Gigabit Ethernet quad small form-factor pluggable–double density (QSFP-DD) ports.
Special modular networking interfaces achieve high speeds and more flexibility, including small form-factor pluggable (SFP) or faster ones with additional four lanes (quad small form-factor pluggable [QSFP]). The benefit of using SFP and QSFP ports compared to Ethernet ones is that you can pair them with many types of transceivers. The type of transceiver will determine the speed of the link, its connector, distance that can be covered by signal, and medium.