Full English Description for Cisco N9K-C9396PX

1. Part Number Naming Breakdown

Model: N9K-C9396PX

N9K: Cisco Nexus 9000 fixed data center switch product series
C93: First-generation Nexus 9300 classic fixed leaf/spine switch hardware platform
96: Total 96 SFP+ optical downlink ports
PX: Multi-rate SFP+ port variant supporting 1G / 10G transceivers, Trident II ASIC, dual operation modes: standalone NX-OS or ACI fabric mode

2. Short Sales One-Liner (For BOM, Quotation & Datasheet Header)

Cisco Nexus N9K-C9396PX, 2RU rack-mount ultra-high-density leaf data center switch, 96 universal multi-rate SFP+ 1/10G fiber ports, 1.92 Tbps non-blocking switching capacity, dual hot-swappable redundant power supplies and multiple variable-speed fan trays, dual-mode standalone NX-OS or ACI fabric operation, optimized for dense 10G fiber server/storage aggregation, converged FCoE fabrics and large-scale ACI multi-tenant data center deployments.

3. Complete Product Overview Paragraph

The Cisco Nexus N9K-C9396PX is a 2RU fixed-port Layer 2/3 Ethernet switch within the original Nexus 9300 classic portfolio, designed for ultra-dense top-of-rack leaf aggregation in enterprise virtualized data centers, converged compute-storage fabrics and ACI intent-based cloud infrastructures. Equipped with 96 hot-pluggable universal SFP+ slots with auto-negotiation for 1G and 10G optical signals, the chassis delivers full wire-rate non-blocking forwarding with a total switching bandwidth of 1.92 Tbps and a forwarding throughput of 1.44 Bpps for standard 64-byte minimum frames. All SFP+ ports accept standard SFP 1G and SFP+ 10G transceivers including SR, LR, ER optical modules and short-range DAC twinax cables for rack internal interconnections.

The chassis integrates dedicated out-of-band 1G RJ45 management, mini-USB RS232 console and dual USB Type-A ports to support POAP zero-touch provisioning, offline configuration backup and firmware upgrades. Dual hot-swappable redundant power supply modules and N+1 redundant fan trays eliminate single points of hardware failure, with bidirectional airflow options (port-side intake / port-side exhaust) available at order time to match diverse rack thermal layout requirements. This switch supports two independent operating modes: modular standalone Cisco NX-OS for traditional routed data center architectures, or native ACI fabric mode for policy-driven automated multi-tenant infrastructure. Onboard ASIC hardware acceleration enables EVPN/VXLAN overlay routing, FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet storage convergence and hardware MACsec encryption, paired with comprehensive streaming telemetry and open DevOps automation APIs to build scalable leaf-spine fabrics. With industry-leading 96×10G fiber density within a 2RU footprint, the N9K-C9396PX drastically reduces total rack consumption for massive 10G server and storage aggregation workloads.

4. Detailed Hardware Interface Specifications

Main Data Ports (96 × Universal SFP+ Slots)

Supported speeds: Auto-negotiate 1000BASE-X (1G) / 10GBASE-X (10G)
Compatible transceivers: SFP 1G SX/LX, SFP+ 10G SR/LR/ER/ZR, 10G passive DAC twinax cables
All 96 ports operate wire-rate simultaneously under full load without port grouping speed restrictions

Management & Auxiliary Ports

1 × 10/100/1000BASE-T RJ45 out-of-band management port
1 × Mini-USB RS232 console port for local CLI access
Dual USB 2.0 Type-A ports for configuration backup, firmware upload and POAP deployment

Power & Cooling

Dual hot-swappable power supply options: 650W AC, 930W DC, 1200W HVAC/HVDC (1+1 active sharing redundancy, live hot-swap without traffic interruption)
N+1 redundant variable-speed fan trays, airflow options: PI (port-side intake) / PE (port-side exhaust)
Operating temperature range: 0°C ~ 40°C full load; non-operating storage range: -40°C ~ 70°C
Humidity tolerance: 5%–85% non-condensing; maximum operating altitude: 4000 meters

Physical Form Factor

Dimensions: 2RU standard 19-inch rack chassis, 8.8 cm (H) × 43.9 cm (W) × 57.1 cm (D)
RoHS-6 compliant, NEBS Level 3 qualified, 80Plus Platinum high-efficiency power certified

Core Hardware Performance Benchmarks

Total switching capacity: 1.92 Tbps full duplex non-blocking
Forwarding rate: 1.44 Bpps (64-byte frame wire-rate)
Shared dynamic packet buffer for congestion absorption
MAC address table size: 128,000 MAC forwarding entries
IPv4 / IPv6 unicast route table capacity: 128,000 routing entries
VLAN support: Up to 4094 standard IEEE 802.1Q tagged VLANs
System memory: 16GB DRAM + 64GB onboard SSD storage
Typical cut-through switching latency: 1–2 microseconds for minimum-size Ethernet frames

5. Core Software Feature Suite (Dual NX-OS / ACI Operation Modes)

Layer 2 & Layer 3 Routing

Static routing, RIP, OSPFv2/v3, EIGRP, BGP, VRRP, PIM sparse/dense multicast, FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet for unified compute-storage fabrics

Cloud Fabric Overlay

Hardware-accelerated EVPN/VXLAN, symmetric & asymmetric VXLAN routing, multi-tenant fabric segmentation

Enterprise Security

802.1X port authentication, MAB MAC bypass authentication, DHCP Snooping, Dynamic ARP Inspection, CoPP control-plane policing, hardware 128-bit MACsec link encryption, TrustSec SGT zero-trust segmentation

Monitoring & Telemetry

Sampled IPFIX streaming telemetry, ERSPAN remote port mirroring, local SPAN / VSPAN, real-time port buffer and queue utilization monitoring

Automation & DevOps

POAP zero-touch provisioning, NX-API REST JSON/XML interfaces, embedded Linux Bash shell, Python scripting, containerized application hosting, ISSU in-service software upgrade without traffic downtime

High Availability

Modular fault-isolated process architecture, stateful process restart, redundant control plane, hot-swappable power supply and fan FRUs

6. Typical Deployment Use Cases

Ultra-dense top-of-rack (ToR) leaf switch for massive 10G fiber server and storage rack aggregation
Converged compute/storage fabric node supporting FCoE SAN block storage workloads
High-port-count leaf access node for large-scale ACI Application Centric Infrastructure fabrics
Enterprise virtualization data center access layer for heavy 10G fiber infrastructure expansion

7. Datasheet Short Summary Paragraph

The Cisco Nexus N9K-C9396PX is a 2RU classic-generation ultra-high-density data center leaf switch with 96 universal 1/10G SFP+ fiber ports, delivering 1.92 Tbps non-blocking switching performance with dual redundant power and cooling hardware. Supporting both standalone modular NX-OS and ACI fabric operational modes, it features hardware VXLAN EVPN overlay, FCoE storage convergence and enterprise security acceleration, serving as a high-density aggregation leaf switch for large virtualized enterprise and enterprise-scale ACI cloud data centers built on 10G fiber server infrastructure.


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