Cisco MDS 9396T (DS-C9396T-K9) Full Product Description

1. Short Sales Title

2. Official Product Overview & Lifecycle

1. DS-C9396T-48PITK9 (Intake / I): Front-to-back cold aisle airflow (air intake front port panel, exhaust rear PSU compartment)
2. DS-C9396T-48PETK9 (Exhaust / E): Back-to-front hot aisle airflow (air intake rear power panel, exhaust front port panel)
   Separate high-voltage DC telecom variant DS-C9396T-HV-K9 sold independently; all power supplies and fan trays are color-coded and non-interchangeable between AC/HV and airflow I/E SKUs.

Core Hardware Differentiators vs MDS 9396S-K9 (16G predecessor)

1. Native 32Gbps Fibre Channel SFP+ auto-sensing (2/4/8/16/32G), line-rate dedicated bandwidth per port; MDS 9396S limited to maximum 16G FC hardware onlyCisco.
2. Optimized pay-as-you-grow licensing baseline: Ships with48 active ports factory default, expandable via single M9396T-PL16 16-port incremental software licenses to 64 → 80 → full 96 ports without hardware replacement (MDS 9396S uses 12-port license tiers).
3. Massive 3.072 Tbps single-chassis non-blocking fabric capacity, doubling MDS 9396S’s 1.536 Tbps throughput, built for NVMe flash, AI database and multi-ISL trunk high-throughput workloadsCisco.
4. Next-gen ASIC with native FC-NVMe offload, VMID virtual machine I/O tracking, built-in SAN telemetry analytics, expanded VOQ virtual output queuing buffers and larger TCAM scale for dense blade server rack deploymentsCisco.
5. Four independent hot-swappable fan trays with multi-fan fault tolerance (survive up to two fan tray failures without thermal shutdown); MDS 9396S also four fans but older generation with lower thermal efficiency.
6. 650W 80 Plus Platinum high-efficiency redundant AC power supplies (MDS 9396S uses 800W standard PSUs with worse energy efficiency under light load).
7. Dual bidirectional airflow hardware options fully compliant with modern cold/hot aisle data center rack containment architectures.
8. Advanced native hardware features: Autozone automatic zoning, enhanced slow-drain detection/isolation, full EVPN-FC interoperability, onboard Python interpreter and NX-API REST automation absent from MDS 9396S legacy NX-OS firmwareDell.

Core High-Availability Design

Model Suffix Breakdown

• DS-C: Cisco MDS storage switch part number prefix
• 9396T: MDS 9300-T modern 32G high-density fixed fabric series, total 96 integrated SFP+ Fibre Channel ports
• K9: Standard AC power SKU with full multilayer NX-OS enterprise/carrier feature license
• I = Intake (front-to-back cold aisle airflow), E = Exhaust (back-to-front hot aisle airflow)
• T = Third-generation 32G ASIC platform with NVMe telemetry and high-performance fabric

3. Chassis Port & Hardware Layout Definition

1. Front Fixed Fibre Channel Ports: 96×hot-swappable SFP+ slots, autosensing 2/4/8/16/32 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 M9396T-PL16 16-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
   • Dual isolated 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band Ethernet management ports (separate SAN analytics export interface)
   • 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 650W Platinum AC power supply bays supporting 1+1 N+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-FC32G-SW: 32Gbps short-wave multimode, 500m transmission reach
   • DS-SFP-FC32G-LW: 32Gbps long-wave single-mode, 10km transmission reach
   • Backward compatible with legacy 8G / 16G FC SFPs for existing storage array interoperation
2. Power supply compatibility: C6848T-650AC 650W Platinum AC PSUs exclusive to DS-C9396T-K9; high-voltage DC 650W PSUs manufactured for DS-C9396T-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: 3.072 Tbps full-duplex system-wide bandwidth
• Wire-speed frame forwarding rate: Up to 3.072 Bpps Fibre Channel frame switching at full 32G line rate
• Low-latency virtual output queuing (VOQ) shared packet buffer pool with dedicated buffer credit allocation for NVMe flash, OLTP database and multi-tenant VPN burst I/O
• 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 feature: 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 multi-protocol ASIC hardware offload: FC-NVMe low-latency frame processing, VMID virtual machine storage I/O tracking, real-time SAN telemetry analyticsCisco

Power & Cooling System

• Power supply bays: 2 hot-swappable redundant slots, each 650W Platinum AC PSU fully powers complete chassis independently (1+1 N+1 failover protection)
• AC input voltage range: 100–240V 50/60Hz universal auto-ranging alternating current, 80 Plus Platinum high efficiency
• 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: 310W fully populated with 96×32G SFP+ transceivers under maximum storage traffic load
• MTBF: 285,000 hours under standard 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 × 54.61 cm (3.5 × 17.5 × 21.5 inches)
• 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
• Dual isolated 10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band Ethernet management ports
• 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 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 + Autozone automatic standalone fabric zoning
• Complete FICON protocol stack support for IBM mainframe disk and tape enterprise storage connectivity
• Inter-Switch Link (ISL) trunk PortChannel load balancing across mixed 16G/32G 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
• FC-NVMe optimized frame handling for low-latency all-flash NVMe storage workloadsCisco

Multilayer Storage Routing & Multi-Protocol 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 VSANs
• Complete 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
• Static FC route redistribution between VSAN and MPLS domains

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, NVMe flash storage, tape backup, and disaster recovery replication streams
• Dedicated high-priority traffic queue for low-latency real-time unified communications and database workloads
• Medianet media optimization for enterprise video and telepresence storage workflows

Enterprise & Service Provider 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
• 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
• Port lockdown, VSAN read-only access permissions, 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
• Dual isolated out-of-band Ethernet management ports for offline device access during fabric-wide outages and analytics export
• 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, 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 hardware health validation without traffic interruption
• Onboard Python 3 interpreter + NX-API REST interfaces for custom SAN automation scripts

6. High Availability Capabilities (Core Differentiators vs MDS 9396S-K9 16G Model)

1. Dual hot-swappable high-efficiency 650W Platinum AC redundant power supplies (1+1 power failover protection, lower power consumption under partial load vs MDS 9396S 800W PSUs)
2. Four redundant variable-speed hot-swappable fan trays with multi-fan fault tolerance (survive two fan tray failures without SAN outage)
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. Native 32G full non-blocking per-port Fibre Channel bandwidth (MDS 9396S limited to maximum 16G line rate)
5. Pay-as-you-grow 16-port incremental licensing starting from 48 pre-activated base ports up to full 96 ports, fewer license purchases needed to scale to full port density vs MDS 9396S 12-port tiers
6. Dual bidirectional airflow hardware options fully compatible with modern cold/hot aisle data center rack containment architectures
7. Massive 3.072 Tbps single-chassis non-blocking fabric capacity, doubling MDS 9396S’s 1.536 Tbps bandwidth limit, optimized for high-throughput NVMe and MPLS multi-tenant carrier PoP workloads
8. Modern NX-OS software stack with native EVPN, POAP, Autozone, VMID analytics, onboard Python and REST API automation absent from MDS 9396S legacy firmware
9. Expanded VOQ buffer, TCAM and Flexible NetFlow scale optimized for large-scale virtualized all-flash storage deployments
10. Limitation: Fixed compact 2RU chassis with no modular port card expansion capability like MDS 9500 directors, no native 64G/128G Fibre Channel generation hardware support

7. Typical Deployment Scenarios

1. Medium-to-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 integrated pre-activated 32G FC ports connect primary production NVMe flash storage arrays and dense blade server racks, expandable via 16-port software licenses 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. Large Multi-Building Enterprise Campus Core-Edge SAN Fabric
   Multiple DS-C9396T-K9 edge switches deployed per building storage rack, utilizing mixed 16G/32G 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 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 MPLS multi-tenant VSAN isolation features support mixed enterprise and agency storage workloads in a single space-efficient 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-C9396T-K9 ideal for carrier PoP edge deployments, terminating hundreds of 32G 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 9396S 16G SAN Hardware Refresh Migration Upgrade
   Drop-in performance upgrade for aging 16G MDS high-density fixed fabric switches, fully backward compatible with existing 8G/16G Fibre Channel SFP transceivers while unlocking native 32G line-rate bandwidth, four-fan fault tolerance, Platinum high-efficiency power supplies and modern NX-OS automation workflows.

8. Standard Package Contents

Items Sold Separately (Not Included)

• Dual 650W Platinum 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)
• M9396T-PL16 16-port incremental software activation licenses to expand active FC port count
• SFP (8G/16G) / SFP+ (32G) 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)