Organizations everywhere recognize that changing application environments are creating new demands for the IT infrastructure that supports them. Application workloads are deployed across a mix of virtualized and nonvirtualized server and storage infrastructure, requiring a network infrastructure that provides consistent connectivity, security, and visibility across a range of bare-metal, virtualized, and cloud computing environments:



- Application instances are created dynamically. As a result, the provisioning, modification, and removal of application network connectivity needs to be dynamic as well.

- Business units demand accelerated application deployments. IT departments have to provide shared IT infrastructure to address time-to-market needs and to increase their return on investment (ROI).

- With organizations deploying a mix of custom, open-source, and off-the-shelf commercial applications, IT departments must manage both security and quality of service (QoS) for environments that support multitenancy.

- Applications have been transitioning over time to a less monolithic, scale-out, multinode model. IT infrastructure that supports this model must scale with the speed of business and support both 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.



The Cisco Nexus® 9000 Series Switches include both modular and fixed-port switches that are designed to overcome these challenges with a flexible, agile, low-cost, application-centric infrastructure.



The Cisco Nexus 9300 platform consists of fixed-port switches designed for top-of-rack (ToR) and middle-of-row (MoR) deployment in data centers that support enterprise applications, service provider hosting, and cloud computing environments. They are Layer 2 and 3 nonblocking 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet switches with up to 2.56 terabits per second (Tbps) of internal bandwidth.



The Cisco Nexus 9372TX and 9372TX-E Switches are 1RU switches that support 1.44 Tbps of bandwidth and over 1150 mpps across 48 fixed 10-Gbps BASE-T ports and 6 fixed 40-Gbps QSFP+ ports (Figure 3). The Cisco Nexus 9372TX-E is a minor hardware revision of the Cisco Nexus 9372TX. Enhancements in the hardware are transparent in NX-OS mode and offer feature parity.



All the Cisco Nexus 9300 platform switches use dual- core 2.5-GHz x86 CPUs with 64-GB solid-state disk (SSD) drives and 16 GB of memory for enhanced network performance.



With the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series, organizations can quickly and easily upgrade existing data centers to carry 40 Gigabit Ethernet to the aggregation layer or to the spine (in a leaf-and-spine configuration) through advanced and cost-effective optics that enable the use of existing 10 Gigabit Ethernet fiber (a pair of multimode fiber strands). Please see the Cisco 40GBASE QSFP modules data sheet for more details.



Cisco provides two modes of operation for the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series. Organizations can use Cisco® NX-OS Software to deploy the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series in standard Cisco Nexus switch environments. Organizations also can use a hardware infrastructure that is ready to support Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI™) to take full advantage of an automated, policy-based, systems management approach.