Full English Description for Cisco N9K-C93240YC-FX2
1. Part Number Naming Breakdown
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N9K: Cisco Nexus 9000 cloud-scale data center fixed switch product family
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C93240: Compact hybrid SFP28/QSFP28 leaf chassis of Nexus 9300 FX2 second-generation Cloud Scale ASIC platform
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Y: SFP28 multi-rate 1/10/25G optical downlink ports for server, GPU and storage access
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C: QSFP28 multi-rate 40/100G fabric uplink ports, fully breakout-capable
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FX2: Second-gen FX2 Cloud Scale ASIC, larger shared packet buffer, expanded LPM route table capacity, optimized RoCEv2 lossless transport, high-performance unsampled streaming telemetry, dual operation modes: standalone NX-OS and ACI intent-based fabric mode
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Form factor: 1.2RU compact rack-mount design for dense rack deploymentCisco
2. Short Sales One-Liner (For BOM, Quotation & Datasheet Header)
Cisco Nexus N9K-C93240YC-FX2, 1.2RU rack-mount compact high-performance hybrid optical leaf data center switch, 48 × 1/10/25G SFP28 downlink ports plus 12 × 40/100G QSFP28 multi-rate fabric uplink ports, 4.8 Tbps non-blocking switching capacity, dual hot-swappable Platinum-efficiency redundant power supplies and five N+1 variable-speed fan trays, dual-mode standalone NX-OS or ACI fabric operation, optimized for 25G GPU/AI training clusters, HPC parallel computing, top-of-rack virtualization server aggregation, converged FCoE storage-compute fabrics and multi-tenant IaaS cloud data center deployments.
3. Complete Product Overview Paragraph
The Cisco Nexus N9K-C93240YC-FX2 is a space-saving 1.2RU fixed-port Layer 2/3 leaf switch built on the upgraded Nexus 9300 FX2 Cloud Scale ASIC platform, engineered for modern AI GPU racks, high-performance computing (HPC), virtualization and converged storage fabrics in enterprise and ACI Application Centric Infrastructure environmentsCisco. It delivers a balanced hybrid optical port layout: 48 universal SFP28 downlink slots for server/storage connectivity paired with 12 flexible QSFP28 multi-rate ports that can operate as fabric uplinks or secondary high-speed downlinks, delivering full wire-rate non-blocking forwarding with total switching bandwidth of 4.8 Tbps and a forwarding throughput of 2.8 Bpps for minimum 64-byte Ethernet framesCisco.
All SFP28 downlink ports auto-negotiate 1G, 10G and 25G speeds with FC-FEC enabled for stable long-reach 25G optical transmission, supporting SFP 1G, SFP+ 10G, SFP28 25G transceivers, short passive DAC twinax cables, and 8/16/32G Fibre Channel transceivers for unified FCoE compute-storage fabrics. Each QSFP28 port supports independent flexible breakout configurations: 1×100G, 1×40G, 2×50G, 4×25G or 4×10G via breakout cables and QSA adapters, enabling smooth fabric speed migration from 40G to 100G and flexible port density tuning for mixed-speed workload racksCisco.
Powered by FX2-series Cloud Scale silicon, this platform features a significantly expanded LPM route table capacity up to 896,000 IPv4/IPv6 entries, a large shared dynamic packet buffer to absorb traffic micro-bursts, native hardware acceleration for EVPN/VXLAN overlay routing, wire-rate 128/256-bit MACsec encryption on all ports, and optimized RoCEv2 lossless congestion control for low-latency GPU and storage workloads, alongside high-performance unsampled streaming telemetry fully compatible with Cisco Tetration Analytics for real-time fabric observabilityCisco.
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 five 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 match diverse rack thermal layout standardsCisco. 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. Its compact 1.2RU form factor reduces rack unit consumption compared to standard 1RU and 2RU switches, maximizing rack density for GPU and HPC cluster deployments.
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 3m; 8G/16G/32G Fibre Channel for FCoE
QSFP28 Multi-Rate Ports (12 × Universal Slots, Uplink / Downlink configurable)
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Per-port speed & breakout combinations:
1 × 100G, 1 × 40G, 2 × 50G NRZ, 4 × 25G, 4 × 10G via breakout cables / 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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Five variable-speed fan trays (4+1 N+1 redundancy), bidirectional airflow PI / PE configurable at ordering (burgundy = PI intake, blue = PE exhaust)Cisco
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Power efficiency: 80Plus Platinum certified
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Operating temperature range: 0°C ~ 40°C full load; non-operating storage range: -40°C ~ 70°C
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Humidity tolerance: 5%–90% non-condensing operating; max operating altitude: 4000 meters
Physical Form Factor
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Dimensions: 1.2RU standard 19-inch rack chassis, compact depth optimized for server rack deployment
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Empty weight (without PSUs and fans): ~9.1 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: 4.8 Tbps full duplex non-blocking
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Forwarding rate: 2.8 Bpps (64-byte frame wire-rate)
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Shared dynamic packet buffer: Large FX2-series buffer pool for burst traffic absorption
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MAC address table size: 256,000 MAC forwarding entries
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IPv4 / IPv6 unicast LPM route table capacity: 896,000 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 1 microsecond 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, RoCEv2 lossless congestion control for GPU/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 ports, TrustSec SGT zero-trust micro-segmentation
Monitoring & Telemetry
High-performance sampled/unsampled IPFIX streaming telemetry, ERSPAN remote port mirroring, local SPAN/VSPAN, real-time per-port/per-queue buffer utilization visibility, full Cisco 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 leaf switch for 25G GPU virtualization and AI model training clusters
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Low-latency leaf node for HPC parallel computing and big-data workload racks
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Converged compute/storage fabric node supporting FCoE block storage traffic
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Leaf access node for medium and large-scale ACI Application Centric Infrastructure multi-pod fabrics
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Hybrid migration leaf for mixed 10G/25G server generations with flexible 100G uplink/downlink port reconfiguration
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IaaS multi-tenant cloud leaf with compact 1.2RU footprint to maximize rack server density
7. Datasheet Short Summary Paragraph
The Cisco Nexus N9K-C93240YC-FX2 is a compact 1.2RU FX2-generation hybrid optical cloud data center leaf switch equipped with 48 multi-rate 1/10/25G SFP28 downlink ports and 12 reconfigurable multi-rate 40/100G QSFP28 fabric ports, delivering 4.8 Tbps non-blocking switching performance with dual Platinum redundant power and five redundant fan trays. Supporting both standalone modular NX-OS and ACI intent-based fabric operational modes, it features upgraded FX2 ASIC with expanded L2/L3 routing scale, hardware EVPN/VXLAN overlay, wire-rate full-port MACsec encryption and optimized RoCEv2 lossless transport, serving as a high-density low-latency leaf aggregation switch for AI GPU, HPC, virtualized enterprise and multi-tenant cloud data centers built around 25G optical server infrastructure.
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