Full English Description for Cisco N9K-C9516
1. Part Number Naming Breakdown
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N9K: Cisco Nexus 9000 cloud-scale modular data center switch family
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C9516: Flagship 21RU high-density modular chassis with 16 hot-swappable universal line card slots, the largest fixed line-card slot chassis within Nexus 9500 aggregation/spine portfolio
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Supported silicon generations: FX / FX2 / GX / GX2 Cloud Scale ASIC line cards; dual independent operating modes: standalone NX-OS and ACI intent-based fabric mode
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Dedicated fabric module slots, dual supervisor bays, dual system controllers, full redundant power and fan architecture for carrier-grade reliability
2. Short Sales One-Liner (For BOM, Quotation & Datasheet Header)
Cisco Nexus N9K-C9516, 21RU rack-mount flagship ultra-high-density modular core/spine/aggregation data center chassis with 16 universal hot-swappable line card slots, up to 60 Tbps full non-blocking switching capacity via Cloud Scale fabric modules, full compatibility with 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 high-wattage platinum 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, massive AI/GPU HPC training clusters, enterprise high-capacity core aggregation, unified converged storage fabric backbones and service provider data center backbone workloads.
3. Complete Product Overview Paragraph
The Cisco Nexus N9K-C9516 is a flagship 21 rack-unit modular Layer 2/3 chassis switch, the highest-port-density fixed-slot chassis in the Nexus 9500 series, designed for enterprise, service provider and hyperscale cloud data center core, aggregation and spine workloads, fully interoperable with all generations of Nexus 9500 Cloud Scale line cards and dedicated fabric modulesCisco. Equipped with sixteen universal hot-swappable line card bays, multiple dedicated fabric module slots, dual supervisor slots and dual redundant system controllers, the chassis delivers a maximum full-duplex non-blocking switching capacity of 60 Tbps when fully populated with N9K-C9516-FM-E / FM-E2 fabric modules, supporting wire-rate forwarding for minimum 64-byte Ethernet frames across all supported port speeds with zero packet loss under full load as validated by independent third-party testing.
This platform delivers extreme flexible port density customization via interchangeable hot-swappable line cards covering all mainstream data center interface types: 10/100/1000BASE-T copper RJ45 ports, SFP/SFP+/SFP28/SFP56 low-to-medium 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 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. It also supports Cisco Nexus 2000 Fabric Extenders for cost-effective access layer scalingCisco.
Powered by FX/FX2/GX/GX2 Cloud Scale ASIC line cards, the chassis platform provides large unified shared packet buffers to absorb massive burst traffic generated by GPU, HPC and virtualization workloads, drastically expanded MAC and IPv4/IPv6 LPM TCAM route scaling, 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 multi-tenant 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 grid redundant high-wattage 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 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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16 × Hot-swappable universal line card slots
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Multiple dedicated fabric module slots (support N9K-C9516-FM-E 800 Gbps or enhanced FM-E2 fabric cards optimized for AI burst traffic)Cisco
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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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Multiple power supply bays supporting grid redundant deployment
Supported Maximum Port Density (Full Chassis Population)
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1/10GBASE-T copper: Up to 768 ports
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40G QSFP+: Up to 576 wire-rate non-blocking ports
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10G SFP+: Up to 2048 wire-rate non-blocking ports (2304 with moderate oversubscription)Cisco
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25G SFP28, 100G QSFP28, 400G QSFP-DD high-speed line cards fully supported
Fabric Module Options
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N9K-C9516-FM-E: 800 Gbps per-slot fabric module, optimized for 50G/100G medium-scale workloads
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N9K-C9516-FM-E2: Enhanced 800 Gbps fabric module with improved buffer scheduling for heavy AI and multicast burst traffic
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 enhanced precision timing hardware for PTP, SyncE and data center clock synchronization
Power & Cooling
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Power supply options: High-wattage 3000W AC PI, 3000W DC PI, 3000W HVAC/HVDC PI hot-swappable PSUs; N+1 or 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 for low total power consumption
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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: 21RU standard 19-inch EIA rack chassis
Height: 93.41 cm (36.70 in), Width: 44.50 cm (17.50 in), Depth: 80.67 cm (31.76 in) with handlesCisco
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Empty chassis weight: 87.3 kg (192 lb) without PSUs, fans, supervisors or line cardsCisco
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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: 60 Tbps (full FM-E / FM-E2 fabric module deployment)Cisco
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Wire-rate forwarding throughput validated 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; limited FCoE support via SFP/SFP28 line card modules for unified 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 ultra-high-density core spine modular chassis for large-scale 100G/400G leaf-spine hyperscale and service provider data center fabrics
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Maximum-capacity aggregation backbone consolidating thousands 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
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Carrier-grade data center core backbone for service provider enterprise and cloud peering workloads
7. Datasheet Short Summary Paragraph
The Cisco Nexus N9K-C9516 is a 21RU flagship ultra-high-density Cloud Scale core/aggregation/spine cloud data center chassis equipped with 16 hot-swappable universal line card slots supporting copper, SFP, QSFP28 and QSFP-DD multi-speed optical line modules, delivering up to 60 Tbps non-blocking switching capacity with dual redundant supervisors, dual system controllers, N+1 fan trays and grid redundant 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-port-density modular terabit backbone switch for hyperscale cloud spine layers, multi-pod ACI fabrics, enterprise core aggregation, service provider backbones and large AI/GPU HPC data center optical fabric infrastructure.
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