Cisco MDS 9396S (DS-C9396S-K9) Full Product Description

1. Short Sales Title

2. Official Product Overview & Lifecycle

1. DS-C9396S-48PITK9 (Intake / I): Front-to-back cold aisle airflow (air intake front port panel, exhaust rear PSU side)
2. DS-C9396S-48PETK9 (Exhaust / E): Back-to-front hot aisle airflow (air intake rear power side, exhaust front port panel)
   Separate high-voltage DC telecom variant DS-C9396S-HV-K9 sold independently; all power supplies and fan trays are color-coded and non-interchangeable between AC/HV and I/E airflow SKUsCisco.

Core Hardware Differentiators vs MDS 9250i / MDS 9148S

1. Ultra-high fixed port density: Total 96×SFP+ 16G FC ports integrated on 2RU chassis (MDS 9250i only 50 mixed FC/FCoE/IP ports, MDS 9148 only 48 FC ports).
2. Native 16Gbps Fibre Channel SFP+ auto-sensing (2/4/8/10/16G), dedicated line-rate bandwidth per port; MDS 9148 limited to 8G max hardware, MDS 9250i is 16G but lower port count.
3. Reworked pay-as-you-grow licensing baseline: Ships with48 active ports factory default, expandable via single M9396-PL12 12-port incremental software licenses to 60 →72 →84 → full 96 ports without hardware replacement.
4. Massive 1.536 Tbps single-chassis non-blocking fabric capacity, far exceeding MDS 9250i’s 1.6Tbps and MDS 9148’s 768G bandwidth, built for large-scale multi-ISL trunk and all-flash storage throughput workloadsCisco.
5. Four independent hot-swappable fan trays with multi-fan fault tolerance (survive up to two fan tray failures without thermal shutdown); MDS 9148 only dual fan trays with limited resilience.
6. Dedicated storage ASIC with large VOQ virtual output queuing buffers, hardware slow-drain detection, VM virtual machine I/O tracking, expanded FC address table and big Flexible NetFlow scale for dense blade server rack deployments.
7. Dual bidirectional airflow hardware options fully compliant with modern cold/hot aisle data center rack containment architectures.
8. Heavy-duty redundant AC power supplies optimized for full 96×16G populated transceiver power draw, supporting enterprise 24/7 non-stop SAN operation.

Core High-Availability Design

Model Suffix Breakdown

• DS-C: Cisco MDS storage switch part number prefix
• 9396S: MDS 9300 high-density 16G fixed fabric series, total 96 integrated SFP+ Fibre Channel ports
• K9: Standard AC power SKU with full multilayer NX-OS enterprise feature license
• I = Intake (front-to-back cold aisle airflow), E = Exhaust (back-to-front hot aisle airflow)

3. Chassis Port & Hardware Layout Definition

1. Front Fixed Fibre Channel Ports: 96×hot-swappable SFP+ slots, autosensing 2/4/8/10/16 Gbps Fibre Channel, every port full non-blocking line-rate bandwidth (mixed host, storage, ISL inter-switch trunk use)
   • Factory default active port set: Only 48 ports licensed and enabled
   • Expand via M9396-PL12 12-port incremental software licenses to unlock remaining port groups up to full 96-port operation
2. Out-of-Band Management Interfaces
   • RJ45 RS232 serial console port for local CLI access
   • Mini USB dual local console port for laptop zero-cable administration
   • Isolated 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band Ethernet management port for remote SSH/Telnet/SNMP administration
   • External USB Type-A flash storage slot for NX-OS image upgrades, configuration backup and syslog export
   • Physical reset button for factory default configuration recovery
3. Front Diagnostic LED Bank: Global system status, power supply A/B, fan tray, FC port link activity, hardware fault alarm, UID blue locator beacon indicator
4. Rear Compartment Layout: Two independent hot-swappable AC power supply bays supporting 1+1 redundant power operation
5. Front lower fan bays: Four separate hot-swappable multi-fan variable-speed fan assemblies
6. Dual Airflow Hardware Options (color-coded PSUs/fans non-interchangeable between I/E chassis):
   • Intake (red): Front-to-back cold air intake at port panel, hot air exhausted from rear power supply compartment (standard cold aisle rack)
   • Exhaust (blue): Back-to-front cold air intake at rear power panel, hot air exhausted from front port panel (hot aisle containment racks)

Supported Transceivers & Power Hardware

1. Fibre Channel SFP+ transceivers (sold separately):
   • DS-SFP-FC16G-SW: 16Gbps short-wave multimode, 500m transmission reach
   • DS-SFP-FC16G-LW: 16Gbps long-wave single-mode, 10km transmission reach
   • Backward compatible with legacy 8G / 4G / 2G FC SFPs for existing storage array interoperation
2. Power supply compatibility: 800W AC PSUs exclusive to DS-C9396S-K9; high-voltage DC 800W PSUs manufactured for DS-C9396S-HV-K9 telecom variant, airflow-specific PSUs cannot be mixed between I/E chassis
3. No removable expansion module slot; all FC ports and supervisor hardware integrated on base chassis backplane

4. Hardware & Physical Specifications

Core SAN Switching & Routing Performance

• Single-chassis non-blocking fabric maximum aggregate bandwidth: 1.536 Tbps full-duplex
• Wire-speed frame forwarding rate: Up to 1.536 Bpps Fibre Channel frame switching at full 16G line rate
• Low-latency virtual output queuing (VOQ) shared packet buffer pool, up to 4095 buffer credits per port group for high-latency long-distance ISL trunk linksCisco
• FC N_Port address table capacity: 1,048,576 unique host identifiers, optimized for dense blade server rack deployments
• Maximum isolated VSAN virtual fabrics: 4094
• Maximum active zone sets: 256 zone sets, up to 2000 individual zone entries per VSAN
• Jumbo FC frame MTU support: Up to 9000 bytes
• Supported FC port operating modes: F (Fabric host), FL (Arbitrated Loop), TL (Extended Loop), E (ISL inter-switch trunk), TE (Extended ISL), NP (NPV edge host aggregation)
• Link aggregation: PortChannel multi-port FC ISL trunk bundling, maximum 16 FC ports per logical bundle with load balancing
• NPV/NPIV native hardware acceleration: Consolidate thousands of server host ports upstream to MDS core directors without core fabric control-plane overhead
• Slow drain detection hardware ASIC: Automatically isolate slow storage targets to prevent fabric-wide buffer credit starvation storms
• Native VMID virtual machine awareness: End-to-end virtual storage I/O flow tracking for DCNM SAN analytics

Power & Cooling System

• Power supply bays: 2 hot-swappable redundant slots, each 800W AC PSU fully powers complete chassis independently (1+1 N+1 failover protection)
• AC input voltage range: 100–240V AC (10% tolerance), 50/60Hz universal auto-ranging alternating current
• Fan trays: Four separate hot-swappable multi-fan assemblies; minimum two functional fan trays required to avoid thermal shutdown, up to two fan tray failures tolerated with four-fan full redundancy
• Real-time telemetry monitoring: Fan rotational speed, internal chassis ambient temperature, PSU input/output voltage, SFP+ optical transmit power, port error counters and module fault logging via console syslog and SNMP v1/v2c/v3 traps; major thermal alarm threshold at 55°C
• Typical full-load power draw: 800W fully populated with 96×16G SFP+ transceivers under maximum storage traffic load
• MTBF: 300,000 hours under standard enterprise data center and service provider PoP operating conditions

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Rack form factor: 2 RU standard 19-inch horizontal rack mount
• Dimensions (H × W × D): 8.89 cm × 44.45 cm × 41.50 cm (3.5 × 17.16 × 16.34 inches)Cisco
• Bare chassis weight: 11.2 kg (24.7 lbs) without power supplies/fan trays; fully loaded maximum weight 16.8 kg (37 lbs) with dual PSUs and four populated fan trays installed
• Operating ambient temperature range: 0°C to 40°C (32°F–104°F); certified altitude up to 2000 meters
• Storage temperature range: -40°C to 70°C (-40°F–158°F)
• Relative humidity: 10%–90% non-condensing operating; 5%–95% non-condensing storage
• Compliance Certifications: FCC Class A, UL 60950-1, CE, VCCI Class A, NEBS Level 3, RoHS compliant per regional environmental regulations, FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validated

Control Plane Out-of-Band Management Interfaces

• Dual local CLI access: RJ45 RS232 serial port + Mini USB console port
• Dedicated isolated 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band Ethernet management port
• External USB flash storage for offline NX-OS image and configuration archives
• Front panel multi-status LED bank providing real-time hardware health visualization

5. Full NX-OS Multilayer Feature Set (Cisco NX-OS MDS Release 6.x / 7.x / 9.x Universal Image)

Layer 2 Fibre Channel Fabric Services

• VSAN Virtual Storage Area Network: Logical fabric segmentation for multi-application / multi-tenant storage environment isolation
• Dual zoning models: Hard port zoning and soft WWN Smart Zoning for granular host-storage access control
• Complete FICON protocol stack support for IBM enterprise mainframe disk and tape storage connectivity
• Inter-Switch Link (ISL) trunk PortChannel load balancing across mixed 4G/8G/16G FC port speeds (max 16-port bundles)
• DTP Fibre Channel trunk negotiation protocol, FSPF dynamic fabric domain ID routing
• Local SPAN, RSPAN, ESPAN enhanced remote SAN traffic mirroring for multi-session performance troubleshooting
• Per-port broadcast/multicast storm suppression to eliminate fabric-wide RSCN broadcast outages
• NPV N_Port Virtualizer edge switch mode for large-scale core-edge enterprise SAN architecture deployment
• Slow drain detection and congestion isolation hardware feature to mitigate buffer credit starvation
• POAP Power On Auto Provisioning zero-touch switch deployment for mass access rack rollouts
• VMID virtual machine flow tracking for end-to-end virtual storage I/O visibility

Multilayer Storage Routing & Advanced Features

• FSPF Fibre Channel Shortest Path First dynamic fabric routing for multi-switch distributed SAN topologies
• PIM-SM IP multicast for cross-fabric asynchronous synchronous backup replication traffic
• Static FC route configuration for controlled inter-VSAN storage data movement
• Licensed IVR Inter-VSAN Routing feature for secure data transfer between isolated VSAN fabrics
• Optional carrier-grade MPLS service suite: MPLS LDP, VPLS, VPWS, EVPN-FC interoperability, MPLS VPN IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack
• PIM-SSM optimized for long-distance disaster recovery storage replication

Advanced SAN QoS & Traffic Prioritization

• Four hardware priority queues per Fibre Channel port for tiered classification of storage I/O traffic
• Ingress frame policing and egress bandwidth shaping to throttle low-priority tape backup and replication streams
• Pre-built QoS templates for production OLTP database workloads, all-flash NVMe storage, tape backup archives, and disaster recovery replication
• Dedicated high-priority traffic queue for low-latency real-time unified communications and enterprise database workloads
• Medianet media optimization for enterprise video and telepresence storage workflows

Enterprise SAN Security Suite

• Port security: Static WWN locking to block unauthorized physical server/storage device attachment
• RBAC Role-Based Access Control granular CLI user privilege partitioning, integrated with Cisco ISE identity engine
• SSHv2 encrypted remote CLI management, SNMPv3 secure monitoring, AES encrypted startup configuration files
• DH-CHAP mutual bidirectional authentication for ISL inter-switch link fabric authentication
• VSAN read-only access permissions, port lockdown controls, complete audit logging for all fabric configuration changes
• FIPS 140-2 validated security compliance for government and financial regulated environments
• Cisco TrustSec security group tagging for end-to-end policy segmentation across campus and data center domains
• IPv6 over Fibre Channel support for modern dual-stack management networks
• Secure Boot and anti-counterfeit hardware validation to prevent unauthorized firmware tampering

Monitoring & SAN Management Tools

• Cisco DCNM-SAN centralized graphical SAN fabric monitoring, provisioning and REST API automation
• Isolated out-of-band Ethernet management port for offline device access during fabric-wide outages
• External USB flash storage for offline NX-OS firmware image upgrades, running configuration backup archives and syslog export
• Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) automatic MDS fabric neighbor device discovery
• Real-time storage telemetry: Port throughput, I/O latency, frame error counters, SFP+ optical transmit power diagnostics
• Event notification via email, syslog and SNMP traps for real-time fabric fault alerting
• GOLD Generic Online Diagnostics continuous background hardware health validation without traffic interruption
• Onboard Python interpreter + NX-API REST interfaces for custom SAN automation scripts

6. High Availability Capabilities (Core Differentiators vs MDS 9250i-K9 16G Model)

1. Dual hot-swappable high-wattage 800W AC redundant power supplies (1+1 power failover protection, stable under fully populated 96×16G FC port load)
2. Four redundant variable-speed hot-swappable fan trays with multi-fan fault tolerance (survive two fan tray failures without SAN outage; MDS 9250i only dual fan trays limited fault resilience)
3. Full OIR Online Insertion and Removal support for fan tray, power supplies and SFP+ transceivers; live FRU replacement without chassis power cycle or SAN traffic drop
4. Ultra-high 96×16G native FC port density (MDS 9250i only 50 mixed FC/FCoE/IP ports, no dedicated high-density pure-FC design)
5. Pay-as-you-grow 12-port incremental licensing starting from 48 pre-activated base ports up to full 96 ports, scalable for large enterprise storage capacity expansion
6. Massive 1.536 Tbps single-chassis non-blocking fabric bandwidth, doubling MDS 9250i’s 768G throughput limit
7. Dual bidirectional airflow hardware options fully compatible with modern cold/hot aisle data center rack containment architectures
8. Modern NX-OS software stack with native EVPN, POAP, VMID analytics, onboard Python and REST API automation absent from older MDS fixed switches
9. Expanded VOQ buffer, TCAM and Flexible NetFlow scale optimized for large-scale MPLS multi-tenant carrier PoP deployments
10. Limitation: Fixed compact 2RU chassis with no modular port card expansion capability like MDS 9500 directors, no native 32G/64G high-speed Fibre Channel generation hardware support

7. Typical Deployment Scenarios

1. Large Virtualized Data Center Rack-Scale Edge SAN Switch
   Compact 2RU rack form factor deployed as top-of-row / top-of-rack high-density edge SAN aggregation switch; 48 pre-activated 16G FC ports connect primary production all-flash NVMe arrays and dense blade server racks, expandable to full 96 ports as virtualization storage capacity grows, utilizing multi-port ISL PortChannel uplinks to central MDS 9700 core director, creating segmented VSAN production, test and backup storage fabrics for thousands of virtual machines.
2. Multi-Building Enterprise Campus Core-Edge SAN Fabric
   Multiple DS-C9396S-K9 high-density edge switches deployed per building storage rack, utilizing long-distance LW 16G FC ISL trunk links to campus MDS 9700 core director, forming unified enterprise-wide VSAN-isolated storage fabrics for distributed departmental server and tape backup workloads.
3. Large Regional Mission-Critical Headquarters / Government SAN
   Financial, healthcare and government headquarters storage deployments require complete dual power + four-fan hardware redundancy to avoid site-wide catastrophic database and tape backup storage outages; integrated FICON mainframe support enables long-distance cross-site DR replication, while VSAN multi-tenant isolation separates independent agency storage workloads within a single chassis.
4. Medium Service Provider Multi-Tenant PoP Edge Storage Gateway
   Native full MPLS/VPLS/EVPN carrier-grade feature set and massive FC address table scale make DS-C9396S-K9 ideal for carrier PoP edge deployments, terminating hundreds of 16G enterprise customer access circuits and high-speed multi-port ISL core backbone trunks with logical VSAN multi-tenant isolation to separate independent customer storage fabrics.
5. Legacy MDS 9148 / MDS 9250i SAN Hardware Refresh Migration Upgrade
   Drop-in performance upgrade for aging 8G/16G fixed fabric MDS switches, fully backward compatible with existing 4G/8G Fibre Channel SFP transceivers while unlocking native 16G line-rate bandwidth, quadrupled port density, four-fan fault tolerance and modern NX-OS automation workflows.

8. Standard Package Contents

Items Sold Separately (Not Included)

• Dual 800W AC hot-swappable redundant power supply units (airflow color-matched I/E variants non-interchangeable)
• Four matching hot-swappable variable-speed fan trays (airflow color-matched to PSU SKU)
• M9396-PL12 12-port incremental software activation licenses to expand active FC port count
• SFP (4G/8G) / SFP+ (16G) optical fiber transceivers for all chassis FC ports
• Optional IVR Inter-VSAN Routing multilayer software license
• RS232 serial console rollover cable, mini USB console cable
• USB flash memory sticks for NX-OS image and configuration storage
• Fibre channel patch cords, cable management accessories, rack cable guides

Short Commercial Catalog Version (For Quotation & Datasheet Use)