Full English Description for Cisco N9K-C9808
1. Part Number Naming Breakdown
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N9K: Cisco Nexus 9000 cloud-native high-performance modular data center switch family
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C9808: Flagship 16RU modular chassis with 8 universal hot-swappable line card slots, flagship model of Nexus 9800 Silicon One Q200 series
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Core silicon: 7nm second-gen Cisco Silicon One Q200 ASIC, integrated HBM deep unified shared buffer, 12.8 Tbps per-slot forwarding capacity
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Dual independent operating modes: Classic standalone NX-OS mode and ACI Intent-Based Fabric mode
2. Short Sales One-Liner (For BOM, Quotation & Datasheet Header)
Cisco Nexus N9K-C9808, 16RU rack-mount next-gen ultra-high-capacity modular spine/super-spine/aggregation data center chassis with 8 universal line card slots, up to 115.2 Tbps full non-blocking switching capacity via 8 × N+1 redundant Q200 fabric modules, support for 10G/25G/50G/100G/400G QSFP-DD high-density line cards with full line-rate MACsec, dual redundant supervisors, 4 N+1 hot-swappable fan trays and multi-tray grid redundant high-wattage power supplies, dual-mode standalone NX-OS or native ACI fabric operation, purpose-built for hyperscale leaf-spine core interconnection, large AI/GPU HPC training clusters, multi-pod ACI super-spine deployments, media streaming backbone, 5G edge NFV aggregation and unified lossless converged storage fabrics.
3. Complete Product Overview Paragraph
The Cisco Nexus N9K-C9808 is a revolutionary 16 rack-unit modular Layer 2/3 chassis switch built on Cisco’s second-generation Silicon One Q200 7nm ASIC architecture, designed as terabit-scale core spine, super-spine and high-density aggregation backbone for hyperscale IaaS clouds, massive AI/ML training clusters, high-performance computing (HPC), professional media networks and multi-site Cisco ACI Application Centric Infrastructure multi-pod environments. It eliminates traditional midplane design to reduce power consumption, thermal bottlenecks and maintenance complexity, delivering ultra-large shared on-die HBM packet buffers optimized for burst-heavy GPU parallel workloadsCisco.
The chassis features eight universal hot-swappable line card bays, eight dedicated fabric module slots supporting N+1 (7+1) fabric plane redundancy, dual supervisor engine slots, four redundant fan trays and three independent power supply trays. When fully populated with N9K-C9808-FM-A Q200 fabric modules, the chassis delivers a maximum full-duplex non-blocking switching capacity of 115.2 Tbps, with a minimum baseline capacity of 57 Tbps for partial fabric deployments, supporting wire-rate forwarding for minimum 64-byte Ethernet frames across all port speeds without packet loss under full load.
Two primary production line cards are fully supported for flexible port density customization:
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N9K-X9836DM-A: 36-port native 400G QSFP-DD line card, all ports support wire-rate 128/256-bit MACsec, full breakout capability to 2×200G / 4×100G / 4×25G / 4×10G
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N9K-X98900CD-A: Hybrid mixed-speed line card with 14 × 400G QSFP-DD + 34 × 100G QSFP28 ports, backward compatible with QSFP+/QSFP28 transceivers and passive DAC cablesCisco
All QSFP-DD ports support independent flexible breakout profiles for seamless fabric migration across 10G/25G/50G/100G/400G speed generations, with native hardware wire-rate MACsec encryption on every port to secure inter-fabric inter-switch links without external security appliances. The Q200 ASIC integrates ingress VOQ, dynamic flowlet load balancing and deeply optimized RoCEv2 lossless congestion control with PFC, cutting AI training job completion time for low-latency HPC environmentsCisco. 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 massively expanded LPM IPv4/IPv6 routing TCAM and multi-tenant VRF segmentation capacity.
Standard front-to-back cold aisle intake airflow and full hot-swappable FRU architecture eliminate single points of failure: dual hot-swappable supervisor engines, eight redundant fabric modules, four N+1 variable-speed fan trays, and multi-tray grid redundant AC/DC/HVDC power supplies. All supervisor, fabric, line card, fan and power supply modules support non-disruptive online insertion and removal (OIR) 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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8 × Dedicated Q200 fabric module slots (7+1 N+1 redundancy)
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2 × Hot-swappable supervisor engine slots (N9K-C9800-SUP-A / SUP-B)
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4 × Hot-swappable N+1 fan tray bays (N9K-C9808-FAN-A)
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3 × Independent power supply trays for grid redundant power deployment
Supported Line Card Maximum Port Densities (Full 8-slot chassis population)
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N9K-X9836DM-A 36×400G line card: Up to 288 × 400G wire-rate ports
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N9K-X98900CD-A hybrid line card: Up to 112 × 400G + 272 × 100G mixed-speed ports
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All QSFP-DD ports backward compatible with QSFP28 100G, QSFP+ 40G transceivers
Fabric Module Specifications
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N9K-C9808-FM-A: Q200 Silicon One fabric module, 2 × Q200 ASIC per module, 14.4 Tbps per line card slot bandwidth
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Redundancy: 7+1 fabric plane redundancy; graceful performance degradation upon single fabric module failure
Supervisor Module Capabilities
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Integrated 1G RJ45 out-of-band management port, dual USB 2.0 Type-A storage ports, mini-USB RS232 local console
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Built-in SyncE, BITS, PTP and TOD high-precision timing hardware for data center clock synchronization
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High-capacity onboard SSD for NX-OS firmware, configuration archives and telemetry log storage
Power & Cooling
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Power supply options:
AC/HVAC/HVDC: 3 power trays × 3 PSUs each = max 9 total PSUs
DC60 high-voltage DC: 3 power trays × 4 PSUs each = max 12 total PSUs
Grid N+1 redundant deployment supported for carrier-grade reliability
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Airflow: Front-to-back port-side cold aisle intake, rear hot aisle exhaust
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Power efficiency: 80Plus Platinum certified, optimized low-power no-midplane chassis design
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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%–95% non-condensing operating; max operating altitude: 4000 meters
Physical Form Factor
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Dimensions: 16RU standard 19-inch EIA rack chassis
Height: 71.12 cm (28 in), Width: 44.32 cm (17.45 in), Depth: 85.70 cm (33.73 in)
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Weight: Empty bare chassis: 73 kg (162 lb); fully populated with all FRUs: 299 kg (658 lb)
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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: 115.2 Tbps (full 8 × FM-A fabric modules)
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Minimum baseline capacity: 57 Tbps (5 fabric modules deployed)
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Per-line-card-slot bandwidth: 14.4 Tbps wire-rate non-blocking
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Unified HBM shared dynamic packet buffer per Q200 ASIC for cross-port burst traffic absorption
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Massively expanded Silicon One-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: Sub-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 breakout QSFP-DD ports 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 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 super-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, 7+1 redundant centralized fabric planes, dual hot-swappable supervisors, 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-capacity super-spine modular chassis for hyperscale 100G/400G leaf-spine cloud data center fabrics
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Massive aggregation backbone consolidating thousands of 400G ToR leaf racks for virtualization and unified storage workloads
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Multi-pod border super-spine chassis interconnecting geographically separated independent ACI fabric domains
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Dedicated terabit core node for hyperscale IaaS/PaaS multi-tenant cloud environments with extreme east-west AI training traffic
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Low-latency HPC parallel computing cluster core switch supporting mixed-speed breakout ports for large-scale GPU interconnect training clusters
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Professional media network core backbone for 4K/8K ultra-high-bitrate streaming and large media asset workloads
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5G edge NFV aggregation switch supporting high-speed backhaul 100G/400G optical links
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Converged compute/storage aggregation backbone with breakout ports for unified FCoE block storage workload consolidation
7. Datasheet Short Summary Paragraph
The Cisco Nexus N9K-C9808 is a 16RU next-gen Silicon One Q200 flagship ultra-high-capacity modular core/spine cloud data center chassis equipped with 8 hot-swappable universal line card slots supporting 400G QSFP-DD high-density line modules, delivering up to 115.2 Tbps non-blocking switching capacity with dual redundant supervisors, four N+1 fan trays and grid redundant high-wattage Platinum power supplies. Supporting both standalone modular NX-OS and native ACI intent-based fabric operational modes, it leverages 7nm second-gen Q200 Silicon One ASIC with integrated HBM deep shared buffer, ultra-expanded L2/L3 TCAM routing scale, full-port wire-rate MACsec encryption and optimized RoCEv2 lossless transport, serving as a future-proof terabit super-spine backbone switch for hyperscale cloud, AI/GPU HPC, multi-pod ACI fabrics, professional media and 5G edge networking built around 100G/400G high-speed optical fabric infrastructure.
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