Full English Description for Cisco N9K-C93180YC-FX
1. Part Number Naming Breakdown
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N9K: Cisco Nexus 9000 cloud-scale data center fixed switch product series
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C93180: Hybrid SFP28 + QSFP28 leaf chassis of Nexus 9300 FX next-generation platform
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Y: SFP28 multi-rate downlink ports for server and storage access
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C: QSFP28 multi-rate fabric uplink ports
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FX: FX Cloud Scale ASIC, larger packet buffer, doubled L2/L3 table scale, enhanced streaming telemetry, dual operational modes: standalone NX-OS and ACI intent-based fabric mode
2. Short Sales One-Liner (For BOM, Quotation & Datasheet Header)
Cisco Nexus N9K-C93180YC-FX, 1RU rack-mount hybrid optical leaf data center switch, 48 × 1/10/25G SFP28 downlink ports plus 12 × 40/100G QSFP28 fabric uplink ports, 3.6 Tbps non-blocking switching capacity, dual hot-swappable Platinum-grade redundant power supplies and 3+1 redundant variable-speed fan trays, dual-mode standalone NX-OS or ACI fabric operation, optimized for 25G server top-of-rack aggregation, GPU/HPC clusters, converged FCoE storage-compute fabrics and large multi-tenant cloud data center deployments.
3. Complete Product Overview Paragraph
The Cisco Nexus N9K-C93180YC-FX is a compact 1RU fixed Layer 2/3 leaf switch built on the upgraded Nexus 9300 FX platform, designed for modern virtualization, AI GPU racks, high-performance computing and ACI Application Centric Infrastructure fabrics running 25G server access speeds. It adopts a hybrid fixed port layout: 48 universal SFP28 slots for server/storage downlinks and 12 high-density QSFP28 multi-rate uplink ports for spine layer interconnection, delivering full wire-rate non-blocking forwarding with total switching bandwidth of 3.6 Tbps and forwarding throughput of 2.7 Bpps for minimum 64-byte frames.
All SFP28 downlink ports auto-negotiate 1G, 10G and 25G speeds with FC-FEC enabled to guarantee stable long-reach 25G optical transmission, supporting SFP 1G, SFP+ 10G, SFP28 25G transceivers and short passive DAC twinax cables. Each QSFP28 uplink supports flexible independent breakout: 1×100G, 1×40G, 2×50G, 4×25G, 4×10G to smooth fabric speed migration from 40G to 100G. Compared to the earlier EX generation, the FX Cloud Scale ASIC delivers larger shared dynamic packet buffers, doubled MAC and IPv4/IPv6 route table capacity, native hardware acceleration for EVPN/VXLAN overlay routing and wire-rate 128/256-bit MACsec encryption, plus high-performance unsampled streaming telemetry optimized for cloud observability.
The chassis integrates dedicated out-of-band RJ45 management, mini-USB RS232 console and single USB Type-A port to support POAP zero-touch provisioning, offline configuration backup and firmware upgrades. Dual hot-swappable power supplies and N+1 redundant fan trays eliminate single points of hardware failure, with bidirectional airflow options (PI port-side intake / PE port-side exhaust) selectable at order time to fit diverse rack thermal designs. 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 cloud infrastructure. Equipped with comprehensive DevOps automation APIs, the N9K-C93180YC-FX balances dense 25G server access and scalable 100G uplink capacity within a space-saving single rack unit footprint.
4. Detailed Hardware Interface Specifications
SFP28 Downlink Ports (48 × Universal Multi-Rate Slots)
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Auto-negotiated speeds: 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 25 Gbps
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FC-FEC enabled on all 25G optical links
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Supported transceivers & cables: SFP 1G, SFP+ 10G, SFP28 25G, passive DAC cables up to 3 meters
QSFP28 Fabric Uplink Ports (12 × Universal Multi-Rate Slots)
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Per-port speed and breakout combinations:
1 × 100G, 1 × 40G, 2 × 50G, 4 × 25G, 4 × 10G via breakout cables and QSA adapters
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Compatible transceivers: QSFP28 100G, QSFP+ 40G, SFP28 25G, SFP+ 10G
Management & Auxiliary Ports
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1 × 10/100/1000BASE-T RJ45 out-of-band management port
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1 × Mini-USB RS232 console port for local CLI access
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1 × USB 2.0 Type-A port for firmware upload, configuration backup and POAP deployment
Power & Cooling
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Dual hot-swappable power supply options: 650W AC, 930W DC, 1200W HVAC/HVDC (1+1 load-sharing redundancy, live hot-swap without traffic interruption)
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3+1 redundant variable-speed fan trays, bidirectional airflow PI / PE configurable at ordering
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Power efficiency: 80Plus Platinum certified
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Operating temperature: 0°C ~ 40°C full load; storage temperature: -40°C ~ 70°C
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Humidity: 5%–95% non-condensing; maximum operating altitude: 4000 meters
Physical Form Factor
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Dimensions: 1RU standard 19-inch rack chassis, 4.4cm (H) × 44.5cm (W) × 57.1cm (D)
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Empty weight (without PSUs and fans): ~8.2 kg
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Compliance: RoHS-6, NEBS Level 3, global safety and EMC certifications
Core Hardware Performance Benchmarks
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Total switching capacity: 3.6 Tbps full duplex non-blocking
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Forwarding rate: 2.7 Bpps (64-byte frame wire-rate)
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Shared dynamic packet buffer: 48MB for congestion absorption
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MAC address table size: 256,000 MAC forwarding entries
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IPv4 / IPv6 unicast route table capacity: 256,000 routing entries
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VLAN support: Up to 4094 standard IEEE 802.1Q tagged VLANs
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System memory: 32GB DRAM + 128GB onboard SSD storage
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Typical cut-through switching latency: Less than 2 microseconds for minimum-size Ethernet frames
5. Core Software Feature Suite (Dual NX-OS / ACI Operating 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 routing, multi-tenant VXLAN segmentation, fabric multicast optimization for GPU and HPC workloads
Enterprise & Fabric Security
802.1X port authentication, MAB MAC bypass authentication, DHCP Snooping, Dynamic ARP Inspection, CoPP control-plane policing, hardware 128/256-bit MACsec encryption on all uplink ports, TrustSec SGT zero-trust segmentation
Monitoring & Telemetry
High-performance sampled/unsampled IPFIX streaming telemetry, ERSPAN remote port mirroring, local SPAN/VSPAN, real-time buffer, queue and fabric link utilization visibility, full Tetration flow export compatibility
Automation & DevOps
POAP zero-touch provisioning, NX-API REST JSON/XML APIs, embedded Linux Bash shell, native Python scripting, Ansible/Puppet/Chef integration, containerized application hosting, hot patching and 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
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Top-of-Rack (ToR) leaf switch for 25G virtualization server and GPU storage rack aggregation
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Low-latency leaf node for HPC parallel computing and AI training clusters
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Converged compute/storage fabric node supporting FCoE block storage workloads
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Leaf access node for medium and large-scale ACI Application Centric Infrastructure fabrics
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Hybrid migration leaf for mixed 10G/25G server generations with abundant scalable 100G uplink capacity to spine layer
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IaaS multi-tenant cloud leaf for virtual workload racks requiring high uplink bandwidth scalability
7. Datasheet Short Summary Paragraph
The Cisco Nexus N9K-C93180YC-FX is a 1RU FX-generation hybrid optical cloud data center leaf switch equipped with 48 multi-rate 1/10/25G SFP28 downlink ports and 12 multi-rate 40/100G QSFP28 fabric uplink ports, delivering 3.6 Tbps non-blocking switching performance with dual Platinum redundant power and cooling hardware. Supporting both standalone modular NX-OS and ACI intent-based fabric operational modes, it features upgraded hardware EVPN/VXLAN overlay, wire-rate MACsec encryption and expanded L2/L3 forwarding table capacity, serving as a high-performance leaf aggregation switch for modern virtualized enterprise, GPU/HPC and multi-tenant cloud data centers built around 25G optical server infrastructure.
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