Cisco Nexus 9396TX Switch

Get High Performance in a Compact Form Factor

The Cisco Nexus 9396TX is a dense, line-rate 10GBase-T switch. It delivers comprehensive line-rate Layer 2 and Layer 3 overlays and the Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) feature set. It is ideal for top-of-rack deployments in both traditional and ACI-enabled enterprise, service provider, and cloud environments.

Features and Capabilities

The Cisco Nexus 9396TX Switch has 48 10GBase-T ports that can operate at 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, and 10 Gbps speeds and 12 Quad Small Form Pluggable Plus (QSFP+) uplinks. All the ports are line rate, delivering 1.92 Tbps of throughput in a 2-rack-unit (2RU) form factor. The switch can be deployed as an access switch in traditional three-tier designs or as a leaf node in spine-leaf architectures.

Benefits include:

ACI Support

• Integrated multi-hypervisor and bare-metal interoperation with VLAN and VxLAN routing and bridging support in ACI mode
• Single view of the entire fabric on APIC dashboard
• Full normalization of any encapsulation inside the fabric
• Consistent policy-based approach to deploying applications on top of the ACI fabric
• Fabric supports seamless integration of layer 4 (physical and virual) services in the end-to-end ACI policy framework
• Cohesive alignment of policies as workload moves around inside the fabric

Programmability

• Open APIs to manage the switch through remote-procedure calls (JavaScript Object Notation or XML) over HTTP or HTTPS
• Automated configuration through Linux shell scripts
• Support for customer applications through a Linux container environment

High Availability

• Hot-swappable, redundant power supplies and fan trays
• Full patching support

Energy Efficiency

• Power supplies that are rated at 80 Plus Platinum
• Support for front-to-back or back-to-front airflow configuration

Investment Protection

• 40 Gb bidirectional transceiver for reuse of existing 10 Gigabit Ethernet multimode cabling plant for 40 Gigabit Ethernet
• Support for Cisco NX-OS and ACI modes of operation

Specifications at a Glance

• 48 non-blocking 10GBase-T RJ-45 ports that can operate in 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, and 10 Gbps speeds
• 12 40 GE Quad SFP+ (QSFP+) nonblocking ports in uplink module
• 50 MB of shared buffer
• Line-rate VXLAN bridging, routing, and gateway support
• Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) capability
• Front-to-back or back-to-front airflow