There is no dispute that Cisco offers an unmatched portfolio of networking solutions that gives our customers the unique ability to simplify their IT infrastructure and optimize it for the many diverse on-prem and cloud-native applications they are deploying today. The Nexus 9000 is a foundational element of that portfolio that has been installed in almost 11,000 customer environments worldwide.

What helps truly set the Nexus 9000 apart in a very crowded data center switching industry is its Cloud Scale ASIC technology. We believe the advanced intelligence gives Cisco customers a two-year innovation advantage in terms of application performance, pervasive visibility, and security. Today, Cisco is expanding on the tremendous momentum we've had with the Cisco Nexus 9000 and Cloud Scale technology with more flexible ways to deploy them in their data centers.

Specifically, Cisco is expanding the Nexus 9000 fixed-configuration options with the introduction of two new Nexus 9300-FX fixed switches:

• N9K-C93180YC-FX -48port 10/25G, 6p 100G uplink
• N9K-C93108TC-FX -48port 10G (Copper), 6p 100G uplink

These SFP-based switches are ideal for leaf-and-spine deployment in enterprise, service provider, large virtualized, and cloud environments. They offer high degrees of architectural flexibility while being feature-rich for enhanced user experience and simplified operations. Similar to other Cloud Scale Nexus switches, the two FX models support Cisco Tetration Analytics for deep telemetry and automated policy-based systems management while running in Cisco ACI mode.

Other notable innovations and functionality available in the new FX models are: 

Line-rate encryption (MACsec) on all ports:Cisco is the first and only vendor in the market that has integrated high-speed encryption capability built natively into the switch ASIC. This is an important, front-line approach to network security in that MACsec secures the data on physical media, making it impossible for data to be compromised at higher layers. 

LAN/SAN convergence: Unified port capability on all SFP+ ports; multi-speed Ethernet and 8G, 16G, and 32G FC capability for back-end storage networking connectivity. This elegant design promotes efficiency, agility while directly supporting the IT transformation trends of reducing data center footprint and doing more with less.

Smarter buffers: Doubling the burst buffer capacity per port from 20MB to 40MB. Better management of speed mismatch between access and uplink ports with 40 MB of shared buffer space. What makes this buffering smart are two key innovations that Cloud Scale technology delivers in managing buffers and queuing scheduling intelligently.

Further, these new switches and can be easily deployed into either a hot-aisle or a cold-aisle configuration. They offer highly available and efficient design with redundant, hot-swappable power supplies and fan trays makes these switches ideal for mission-critical, always-on environments.

The mission behind the Nexus 9000 was for Cisco to build a networking platform from the ground-up to address the performance, scaling, and management challenges of modern data centers. With the two new FX models, Cisco is enabling customers to tackle these challenges at the very edges of their infrastructure.

For more info: www.cisco.com/go/nexus

Tony Antony
Sr Marketing Manager