Cisco C9404R-A Full Product Description

1. Short Overview

• Suffix breakdown definition:
  • C9400: Catalyst 9400 modular enterprise aggregation switch series
  • 4: Total 4 chassis slots (2 Supervisor + 2 Line Card)
  • R: Side-to-side airflow, shallow closet-optimized depth chassis
  • -A: Assembled pre-built integrated unit with factory preloaded supervisors, fan tray and redundant AC power supplies (distinguished from bare empty C9404R chassis)
• Core differentiators vs bare C9404R: All mandatory base FRUs pre-installed at factory, eliminating separate procurement of supervisors, fan tray and power supplies for rapid deployment; same slot capacity, port scalability, ASIC performance and software feature set as standard C9404R chassis; differentiated from larger C9407R/C9410R by compact 6RU footprint and only two line card slots for maximum 96 access ports.

2. Part Number Breakdown & Hardware Comparison Matrix

Full PN Breakdown

1. C9404R-A: Pre-assembled 4-slot modular aggregation switch integrated chassis
   • Slot 0 & Slot 1: Dual factory pre-installed Supervisor Engine bays (active/standby HA ready out of box)
   • Slot 2 & Slot 3: Empty hot-swappable line card bays (2 slots total, customer adds line cards separately)
   • Rear cage: 4 power supply bays with factory pre-populated redundant AC PSUs + single integrated hot-swappable C9404-FAN fan tray pre-installed
2. Airflow specification: Native side-to-side cooling (air enters front panel, exhausts rear). All factory preloaded power and fan FRUs match this airflow standard; reverse airflow hardware is not supported on this chassis model.

Hardware Comparison Table

Factory Pre-Integrated Hardware Included in C9404R-A

1. 6RU standard 19-inch rack-mount metal chassis frame with front cable management brackets and side mounting handles
2. Dual factory pre-installed matching supervisor engines (C9400-SUP-1XL / C9400X-SUP-2XL depending on build variant) with SSO/NSF high availability ready
3. C9404-FAN dedicated hot-swappable side-to-side fan tray assembly pre-mounted in rear chassis fan bay
4. N+1 redundant hot-swappable AC power supplies factory pre-installed in rear 4-slot PSU cage (2100W / 2880W PoE-capable models based on order configuration)
5. Front panel full LED status array: Global chassis health alarm, per-slot module status LEDs, PSU/fan fault indicators, remote blue UID locator beacon
6. Built-in UHF RFID asset tracking tag, chassis earth grounding lugs, cable strain relief hardware
7. 19-inch rack mounting rails, hardware installation guide, global safety & regulatory compliance documentation
8. Items Not Included (Mandatory Separate Order)
   • 1–2 line card modules to populate empty line card slots
   • SFP/SFP+/SFP28/QSFP28 optical transceivers, DAC/AOC fiber cables
   • RJ45 serial console rollover cable, out-of-band management patch cords, optional lockable front door

Supported Modular Line Card & Supervisor Compatibility

Supported Supervisor Engines (Factory Preloaded on C9404R-A)

Supported Access & Uplink Line Cards

• Copper PoE Line Cards: C9400-LC-48HN (48-port Multi-Gig UPOE++), C9400-LC-48H (48-port Gig UPOE+)
• Fiber Line Cards: C9400-LC-24S (24×1G SFP), C9400-LC-24XS (24×10G SFP+), C9400-LC-24XY (24×25G SFP28), C9400-LC-12QC (12×40G/100G QSFP28 high-speed uplink card)

Supported Power Supply FRUs (Factory Pre-Installed)

3. Chassis Port & Slot Layout Description

Front Panel Slots & Interfaces

1. Dual Pre-Installed Supervisor Slots (Slot 0 / Slot 1)
   Each factory-loaded supervisor integrates full out-of-band management and built-in uplink optical ports:

• RJ45 RS232 serial console port for local CLI configuration
• 1×10/100/1000BASE-T out-of-band MGMT Ethernet port for remote DCNM/SNMP/SSH access
• USB Type-A storage port for firmware images, configuration backup, POAP zero-touch provisioning files
• Front-panel integrated uplink optical slots (10G SFP+, 25G SFP28, 40G QSFP) for core fabric interconnection
• Onboard SSD storage (up to 960GB on SUP-2XL) for containerized application hosting on embedded x86 supervisor CPU

1. Empty Hot-Swappable Line Card Slots (Slot 2 / Slot 3)
   Two vacant modular bays for customer-selected copper PoE or fiber uplink line cards; each line card includes dedicated per-port link/activity LED indicators
2. Global Chassis Status Indicators

• System health LED: Green = normal operation, Amber = minor fault, Red = critical hardware failure
• Per-slot module status LEDs for supervisors and empty line card slots
• Separate fault alarm LEDs for pre-installed power supply and fan tray assemblies
• Remote-triggerable blue UID beacon LED for rapid rack asset identification during maintenance

Rear Panel Hardware Layout

1. Four hot-swappable power supply bays with factory pre-mounted redundant AC power supplies (N+1 / N+N redundant architecture)
2. Single pre-installed hot-swappable 8-fan C9404-FAN tray assembly for side-to-side chassis cooling, serviceable from front or rear of chassis
3. Chassis heavy-duty earth grounding terminals, exhaust air ventilation grilles, cable retention brackets

4. Hardware Performance Specifications

1. Maximum Non-Blocking Switching Fabric Capacity: Up to 48 Tbps full-duplex (deployed with C9400X-SUP-2XL UADP 3.0 supervisors)
2. Layer 2/Layer 3 Forwarding Rate: Up to 18 Bpps at minimum 64-byte Ethernet packets
3. MAC Address Table Scale: Up to 1 million MAC address entries
4. Routing Table Capacity: Up to 2 million IPv4 LPM prefixes, 1 million IPv6 LPM prefixes
5. ACL Resource Pool: Up to 128,000 programmable Layer 2 / Layer 3 ACL entries via dynamic UADP ASIC resource allocation
6. QoS Hardware Capabilities: 8 independent priority queues per port, WRR/DRR scheduling, traffic policing, marking, shaping and congestion avoidance
7. PoE Power Budget: Chassis maximum 2880W UPOE++ power delivery with full 2880W AC PSUs installed, supporting IEEE 802.3af/at/bt 90W per-port power for Wi-Fi 6/6E APs, IP cameras and industrial IoT sensors
8. Native High Availability Features
   • Dual active/standby pre-installed supervisors with SSO stateful switchover and NSF non-stop forwarding
   • ISSU In-Service Software Upgrade for zero-traffic-downtime firmware updates
   • Hot-swappable supervisors, line cards, power supplies and fan tray with OIR online insertion/removal
   • StackWise Virtual multi-chassis virtualization to combine two C9404R-A units into a single logical fabric node
   • N+1 / N+N redundant power supply architecture for power fault tolerance

Physical & Environmental Parameters

• Form Factor: 6 RU rack unit (10.47 in / 26.53 cm height)
• Overall Dimensions (H × W × D): 10.47 × 17.30 × 16.30 in (26.53 × 43.94 × 41.40 cm)
• Pre-assembled chassis weight (dual SUPs, fans, dual PSUs, no line cards/transceivers): 46.3 lb (21.0 kg)
• Fully loaded maximum weight (all line cards + full transceivers): Up to 56.0 lb (25.4 kg)
• Operating Temperature Range: -5°C to +45°C (23°F to 113°F) at altitude ≤1800m; -5°C to +40°C (23°F to 104°F) at altitude ≤3000m
• Storage Temperature: -40°C to +75°C (-40°F to 167°F)
• Operating Humidity: 10%–85% non-condensing
• Acoustic Noise Output: ≤57 dBA under standard 50% power load
• Shock & Vibration Compliance: Operating 5G half-sine shock resistance, storage 15G shock rating, industrial vibration tolerance
• Regulatory Certifications: UL 60950-1, CE Class A EMC, FCC Part 15, NEBS Level 3, GR63 seismic certified, RoHS 6 compliant

Pre-Installed AC Power Supply FRU Specifications

• AC Input Voltage: 100–240V 50/60Hz high-efficiency 80 Plus Platinum power supplies
• PSU Models Factory Loaded: 2100W non-PoE AC, 2880W full UPOE++ AC power supply
• Hot OIR replacement supported without full chassis reboot
• Rated MTBF: 2,077,070 hours under nominal operating environmental conditions

5. IOS XE Comprehensive Software Feature Set

Core Layer 2 Campus Switching Functions

• IEEE 802.1Q VLAN trunking (4096 maximum VLANs), PVLAN private VLAN segmentation for multi-tenant isolation
• RSTP/MSTP spanning tree suite with BPDU guard, root guard, loop guard and uplink fast convergence
• LACP/PAGP EtherChannel link aggregation with cross-line-card port-channel support
• DHCP Snooping, Dynamic ARP Inspection (DAI), IP Source Guard, port security MAC address locking
• IEEE 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet, intelligent UPOE power scheduling with priority power cutoff for IoT and wireless access points

Layer 3 Routing & SD-Access EVPN Fabric Capabilities

• Full IPv4 / IPv6 unicast & multicast routing protocols: Static routes, OSPF, EIGRP, BGP, IS-IS
• Up to 32-way ECMP equal-cost multi-path load balancing for uplink resiliency
• Hardware-accelerated VXLAN EVPN data plane for Cisco SD-Access enterprise fabric architecture
• Anycast gateway, LISP host mobility, native fabric border node functionality
• Hardware VRF-lite multi-tenancy segmentation, support for up to 1000 independent VRF instances

Zero Trust & Enterprise Security Features

• Cisco DNA Security native integration, Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA) for hidden threat detection
• IEEE 802.1X MAC authentication, WebAuth, MAB multi-factor wired access control
• Hardware ACL policy enforcement, CoPP control plane policing to protect supervisor CPU
• TrustSec SGT tag classification and end-to-end policy propagation across the entire fabric
• Secure boot, digitally signed firmware images, encrypted configuration storage, AAA authentication (TACACS+/RADIUS/LDAP)

Automation, Programmability & Observability

• Model-driven programmability: NETCONF, RESTCONF, NX-API, standardized YANG data models
• Embedded x86 supervisor CPU supporting Docker container hosting for third-party custom network applications
• POAP zero-touch automated provisioning for mass fabric deployment
• Streaming real-time telemetry, IPFIX flow export, continuous buffer/latency counter monitoring
• Cisco DNA Center single-pane-of-glass lifecycle management, automated firmware orchestration, fabric topology visualization
• GOLD Generic Online Diagnostic tests for non-disruptive continuous hardware health monitoring

6. Typical Deployment Scenarios for C9404R-A Pre-Assembled Chassis

1. Fast-Track Medium Enterprise Campus Aggregation Layer
   Preloaded dual supervisors, power and fan hardware eliminate lead time for separate FRU ordering; compact 6RU shallow depth fits standard wiring closets, mixed PoE multi-gig and 100G fiber line cards support unified user access and core uplinks, built-in HA delivers 24/7 mission-critical traffic reliability with SD-Access EVPN fabric border node capability.
2. Mid-Size High-Density Wireless Aggregation Pod
   Factory pre-installed high-wattage PoE power supplies deliver full UPOE++ 90W power budget to support hundreds of Wi-Fi 6/6E access points; intelligent PoE priority management prevents AP outages during power budget constraints, 25G/100G supervisor uplinks handle high concurrent wireless client throughput.
3. Hybrid Cloud & Medium Data Center Leaf Aggregation
   Flexible fiber line card options provide 10G/25G/100G uplinks to data center spine switches; VXLAN EVPN multi-tenancy logically isolates corporate user, IoT and cloud workloads on shared physical hardware, pre-assembled design accelerates data center fabric rollout schedules.
4. Smart Building & Industrial IoT Convergence Switch
   Mass PoE capacity powers IP surveillance cameras, door access controllers, lighting sensors and industrial control endpoints; hardware QoS prioritizes low-latency industrial control traffic, TrustSec segmentation isolates vulnerable IoT devices from corporate user networks to reduce attack surface.
5. Disaster Recovery & Redundant Branch Core
   StackWise Virtual virtualizes two C9404R-A pre-assembled chassis into a single logical redundant switch for business-critical branch sites; ISSU zero-downtime firmware upgrades eliminate scheduled maintenance windows for 24/7 operating environments.

7. Standard Package Contents of C9404R-A Pre-Assembled SKU

Separately Mandatory & Optional Add-On Components

1. Mandatory Modules to Complete Functional Switch
   • 1–2 line card modules selected based on required copper PoE or fiber port density
2. Optional Accessories
   • SFP/SFP+/SFP28/QSFP28 optical transceivers, passive Twinax DAC, active AOC fiber cables
   • RJ45 serial console rollover cable, out-of-band Ethernet patch cords, lockable front door, cable management guides
3. Software Licenses
   • DNA Advantage perpetual license for full SD-Access, advanced security, streaming telemetry and end-to-end automation feature set
   • DNA Essentials base license for fundamental Layer 2/Layer 3 switching functionality

Short Commercial Catalog Summary for Quotation