Full English Description for Cisco N9K-C9508
1. Part Number Naming Breakdown
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N9K: Cisco Nexus 9000 cloud-native modular data center switch product family
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C9508: 13RU high-capacity modular chassis with 8 hot-swappable universal line card slots, flagship Nexus 9500 aggregation/spine platform
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Platform architecture: Supports FX/FX2/GX/GX2 Cloud Scale ASIC line cards, dual independent operating modes: standalone NX-OS and ACI intent-based fabric mode
2. Short Sales One-Liner (For BOM, Quotation & Datasheet Header)
Cisco Nexus N9K-C9508, 13RU rack-mount flagship modular core/spine/aggregation data center chassis with 8 universal line card slots, up to 128 Tbps full non-blocking switching capacity via high-speed FM-G fabric modules, full support for 1G/10G/25G/40G/50G/100G/400G copper and optical line cards, dual redundant supervisors, dual system controllers, N+1 hot-swappable fan trays and grid redundant 3000W high-wattage power supplies, dual-mode standalone NX-OS or native ACI fabric operation, purpose-built for hyperscale leaf-spine core interconnection, multi-pod ACI border spine deployments, large AI/GPU HPC clusters, enterprise core aggregation and unified converged storage fabric backbones.
3. Complete Product Overview Paragraph
The Cisco Nexus N9K-C9508 is a flagship 13 rack-unit modular Layer 2/3 chassis switch designed for enterprise, service provider and hyperscale cloud core, aggregation and spine workloads, fully interoperable with all generations of Nexus 9500 Cloud Scale line cards and fabric modulesCisco. Equipped with eight universal hot-swappable line card bays, dedicated fabric module slots, dual supervisor slots and dual redundant system controllers, the chassis delivers a maximum full-duplex non-blocking switching capacity of 128 Tbps when fully populated with N9K-C9508-FM-G 1.6 Tbps fabric modules, supporting wire-rate forwarding for minimum 64-byte Ethernet frames across all supported port speedsCisco.
This platform delivers extreme port density customization via interchangeable line cards covering all mainstream data center interface types: 10/100/1000BASE-T copper RJ45 ports, SFP/SFP+/SFP28/SFP56 low/mid-speed optical ports, QSFP+/QSFP28/QSFP56/QSFP-DD high-speed breakout-capable optical ports up to native 400G. All Cloud Scale line card ports support independent flexible breakout configurations for seamless fabric migration across mixed-speed server, storage and inter-switch links, with hardware wire-rate 128/256-bit MACsec encryption available on all high-speed optical modules to harden inter-fabric inter-switch links without external security appliances.
Powered by FX/FX2/GX/GX2 Cloud Scale ASIC line cards, the chassis platform integrates large unified shared dynamic packet buffers to absorb massive burst traffic generated by parallel GPU training and HPC workloads, drastically expanded MAC address tables and ultra-large IPv4/IPv6 LPM TCAM route scaling for multi-tenant segmentation, native hardware acceleration for EVPN/VXLAN BGP-EVPN overlay routing, and deeply optimized RoCEv2 lossless congestion control with PFC for ultra-low-latency parallel computing environments. High-performance model-driven unsampled gNMI/IPFIX streaming telemetry integrates fully with Cisco Tetration Analytics and Nexus Dashboard for end-to-end full-fabric observability, alongside expanded VRF, multicast and microsegmentation policy capacity for isolated hyperscale cloud workloads.
The chassis adopts standard front-to-back (port-side intake) airflow and full hot-swappable redundant hardware architecture to eliminate single points of failure: dual hot-swappable supervisor engines, dual redundant system controllers, multiple N+1 variable-speed fan trays, and 8 power supply bays supporting N+1 or grid 4+4 redundant deployment of 3000W AC/DC/HVDC power supplies. All supervisor, fabric, line card, fan and power supply modules can be replaced live without chassis power shutdown or production traffic interruption. The switch supports two independent operating modes: modular standalone Cisco NX-OS for traditional routed core data center architectures, or native ACI fabric mode for policy-driven automated multi-tenant cloud infrastructure, with factory pre-tuned POAP zero-touch provisioning and accelerated APIC controller discovery to simplify large-scale multi-pod ACI deployment.
4. Detailed Hardware Chassis & Module Specifications
Chassis Core Slot Layout
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8 × Hot-swappable universal line card slots
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Multiple dedicated fabric module slots (support FM-E 800Gbps, FM-E2 enhanced 800Gbps or FM-G 1.6 Tbps high-capacity fabric cards)
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2 × Hot-swappable supervisor engine slots (N9K-SUP-A/A+/B/B+ series)
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2 × Redundant system controller module slots (N9K-SC-A)
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Multiple fan tray bays with N+1 redundancy
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8 power supply bays supporting grid redundant power deployment
Supported Line Card Port Density Limits (Full Chassis Population)
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1/10GBASE-T copper: Up to 384 ports
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25G SFP28: Up to 1024 ports
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50G SFP56: Up to 512 ports
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40G/100G QSFP+/QSFP28: Up to 256 ports
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400G QSFP-DD: Up to 196 portsCisco
Fabric Module Options
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N9K-C9508-FM-E: 800 Gbps per-slot fabric module, optimized for 50G/100G medium-scale workloads
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N9K-C9508-FM-E2: Enhanced 800 Gbps fabric module with improved buffer scheduling for AI burst traffic
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N9K-C9508-FM-G: 1.6 Tbps per-slot Cloud Scale fabric module, unlocks maximum chassis capacity up to 128 Tbps non-blocking bandwidthCisco
Supervisor Module Capabilities
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Integrated 1G RJ45 out-of-band management port, mini-USB RS232 local console, USB 2.0 Type-A storage port
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High-capacity onboard SSD for NX-OS firmware, configuration archives and telemetry log storage
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SUP-B/B+ variants include high-precision timing hardware for PTP, SyncE and data center clock synchronization
Power & Cooling
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Power supply options: 3000W AC PI, 3000W DC PI, 3000W HVAC/HVDC PI hot-swappable PSUs; N+1 or 4+4 grid redundant deployment
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Fan trays: Front-to-back PI port-side intake airflow, N+1 variable-speed redundant design
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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: 13RU standard 19-inch EIA rack chassis
Height: 57.78 cm (22.70 in), Width: 44.50 cm (17.50 in), Depth: 80.67 cm (31.76 in) with handles
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Empty chassis weight: 68.2 kg (150 lb) without PSUs, fans, supervisors or line cardsCisco
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MTBF: 928,910 hours under standard operating conditions
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Compliance: RoHS-6, NEBS Level 3, global safety, EMC and telecom regulatory certifications
Core Hardware Performance Benchmarks
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Maximum full-duplex non-blocking switching capacity: 128 Tbps (full FM-G fabric module deployment)
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Wire-rate forwarding throughput optimized for mixed 10G/25G/100G/400G high-speed workloads
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Large unified shared dynamic packet buffer for cross-port burst traffic absorption
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Massively expanded Cloud Scale MAC address table and IPv4/IPv6 LPM TCAM route capacity for hyperscale multi-pod fabrics
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VLAN support: Up to 4094 standard IEEE 802.1Q tagged VLANs
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Maximum isolated VRF instances: 16,000 multi-tenant virtual routing tables
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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, full BGP routing suite, VRRP, PIM sparse/dense multicast; full FCoE support via SFP/SFP28 line card modules for unified compute-storage fabrics
Cloud Fabric Overlay
Hardware-accelerated EVPN/VXLAN symmetric & asymmetric BGP-EVPN routing, multi-tenant VXLAN segmentation, fabric multicast optimization, advanced lossless RoCEv2 congestion control optimized for GPU/AI/HPC low-latency training workload clusters
Enterprise & Fabric Security
802.1X port authentication, MAB MAC bypass authentication, DHCP Snooping, Dynamic ARP Inspection, CoPP control-plane policing, hardware wire-rate 128/256-bit MACsec encryption on all high-speed optical line card ports, TrustSec SGT zero-trust micro-segmentation for core fabric isolation
Monitoring & Telemetry
High-performance model-driven sampled/unsampled gNMI/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 for end-to-end fabric analytics
ACI Fabric Optimized Capabilities
Native multi-pod inter-fabric IPN routing support, factory POAP zero-touch automation profiles, accelerated APIC controller discovery, built-in inter-pod link validation templates, preconfigured breakout port mapping for large-scale ACI spine deployments
Automation & DevOps
POAP zero-touch provisioning, NX-API REST JSON/XML APIs, embedded Linux Bash shell, native Python scripting, Ansible/Puppet/Chef full integration, containerized application hosting via Cisco Application Framework (CAF), hot patching and ISSU in-service software upgrade without core fabric traffic downtime
High Availability
Modular fault-isolated process architecture, stateful process restart, redundant centralized fabric cards, dual hot-swappable supervisors, dual redundant system controllers, hot-swappable power supply, fan and line card FRUs for non-disruptive field maintenance
6. Typical Deployment Use Cases
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Flagship core spine modular chassis for large-scale 100G/400G leaf-spine enterprise and hyperscale cloud data center fabrics
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Ultra-high-capacity aggregation backbone consolidating hundreds of ToR leaf racks for virtualization and unified storage workloads
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Multi-pod border spine chassis interconnecting independent ACI fabric domains across geographically separated data center sites
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Dedicated high-bandwidth core node for hyperscale IaaS/PaaS multi-tenant cloud environments with massive east-west traffic
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HPC parallel computing cluster core switch supporting mixed-speed breakout ports for large-scale GPU interconnect training clusters
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Converged compute/storage aggregation backbone with SFP/SFP28 line cards for unified FCoE block storage workload consolidation
7. Datasheet Short Summary Paragraph
The Cisco Nexus N9K-C9508 is a 13RU flagship Cloud Scale modular core/aggregation/spine cloud data center chassis equipped with 8 hot-swappable universal line card slots supporting copper, SFP, QSFP28 and QSFP-DD multi-speed optical line modules, delivering up to 128 Tbps non-blocking switching capacity with dual redundant supervisors, dual system controllers, N+1 fan trays and grid redundant 3000W Platinum power supplies. Supporting both standalone modular NX-OS and native ACI intent-based fabric operational modes, it is compatible with FX/FX2/GX/GX2 ASIC line cards featuring large unified shared buffer, ultra-expanded L2/L3 TCAM routing scale, full-port wire-rate MACsec encryption and optimized RoCEv2 lossless transport, serving as the highest-density scalable modular terabit backbone switch for hyperscale cloud spine layers, multi-pod ACI fabrics, enterprise core aggregation and large AI/GPU HPC data center optical fabric infrastructure.
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