Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches

Introduction

Reimagine, Reinforce, Redefine

The Catalyst 9500 Series, including the Catalyst 9500X models, continues to shape the future with continued innovation that helps you reimagine connections, reinforce security and redefine the experience for your hybrid workforce big and small.

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series switches based on Cisco Unified Access Data Plane (UADP) Application- Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) are Cisco’s lead fixed enterprise core and aggregation switching platform and as part of the Catalyst 9000 family, are built to transform your network to handle a hybrid world where the workplace is anywhere, endpoints could be anything, and applications are hosted all over the place.

Cisco Catalyst 9500X switch based on Cisco Silicon One Q200 ASIC is purpose built for the next generation core with a programmable pipeline (P4) and is the first network silicon to offer switching capacity up to 12.8 Tbps full duplex in the enterprise. The Q200 ASIC offers high-performance along with full routing and switching capabilities without external memories. This is enabled by internal architecture that includes an on-chip High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). The Catalyst 9500X switch leverages a high-performance multiple core x86 CPU, and is Cisco’s leading purpose-built fixed core and edge services enterprise switching platform, built for security, IoT, and cloud.

Cisco Catalyst 9500X switch is the industry’s first purpose-built fixed 10, 25, 50, 40, 100, 200 and 400 Gigabit Ethernet switch targeted for the enterprise campus. The Catalyst 9500X switch delivers unmatched forwarding scale (MAC addresses, IP unicast and multicast routes, MPLS labels) and deep buffering for enterprise applications. The Catalyst 9500X models includes non-blocking 50 Gigabit Ethernet Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP-56) and non-blocking 400 Gigabit Ethernet Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable Double Density (QSFP-DD) ports.

Catalyst 9500 Series switches support advanced routing and infrastructure services (such as Multiprotocol Label Switching [MPLS] Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPNs, Multicast VPN [MVPN], and Network Address Translation [NAT]); Cisco Software-Defined Access capabilities (such as a host tracking

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database, cross-domain connectivity, and VPN Routing and Forwarding [VRF]-aware Locator/IDSeparation Protocol [LISP]); and network system virtualization with Cisco StackWise Virtual technologythat are critical for their placement in the campus core. The Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series also supportsfoundational high-availability capabilities such as patching, Cisco Nonstop Forwarding with StatefulSwitchover (NSF/SSO), redundant platinum-rated power supplies, and fans, while supporting a wide arrayof optics. Catalyst 9500 Series switches provide operational choice of Cisco Catalyst Center, or Merakicloud monitoring.

The foundation of Software-Defined Access

The enterprise network lies at the heart of digital transformation. A network that is open, programmable,integrated, and secure maximizes business agility, allowing new business opportunities to be pursued andcaptured.

The Cisco Networking Cloud with Software-Defined Access (SD-Access) is the network fabric thatpowers business. Cisco SD-Access is an open and extensible, software-driven architecture thataccelerates and simplifies your enterprise network operations. SD-Access enables policy-basedautomation from edge to cloud with foundational capabilities.

Product overview

Cisco Catalyst 9500X models

The Cisco Silicon One Q200 Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) is purpose built for thenext generation network core + edge switch. It is the first enterprise ASIC to offer speeds up to 12.8

Tbps full duplex with 8 Bpps of forwarding performance, while supporting high-performance andfull routing and switching capabilities without external memories.

The Cisco Silicon One Q200 ASIC is built on 7nm fabrication technology, capable of highperformance while maintaining a low power footprint.

Up to 12.8 (switching ASIC capacity) Tbps switching capacity with 8 Bpps forwarding rate.

80MB of dedicated low-latency buffer, with up to 8GB of HBM buffer for deep packet buffers.

Up to 28 native nonblocking 40/100 Gigabit Ethernet QSFP28 ports.

Up to 60 native nonblocking 10/25/50 Gigabit Ethernet SFP56 ports.

Up to 8 native nonblocking 40/100/200/400 Gigabit Ethernet QSFPDD ports.

Intel 2.3-GHz x86 CPU with 8 cores and 32-GB of DDR4 memory.

Up to 960 GB of SSD local storage for container-based application hosting (2x 10G KR ports).

Flexible routing (IPv4, IPv6, and multicast) tables, Layer 2 tables, ACL tables, and QoS tables.

ASIC tables for switching scale up to 256K MAC addresses and routing scale up to 2M routes.

Dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 and dynamic hardware forwarding table allocations, for ease of IPv4-to-IPv6migration.

Hardware support for Application Hosting.

Hardware support for line-rate 256-bit 802.1ae MACsec and WAN-MACsec data encryption.

Cisco StackWise Virtual technology, a network system virtualization technology that increasesoperational efficiency and boosts nonstop communications and scaled system bandwidth.Multichassis EtherChannel can be configured across StackWise-Virtual members for high resiliency.

Platinum-rated (90% efficient) 1500 Watt AC and/or DC power supplies.

Field-replaceable, N+1 redundant fan-tray units, with an added flexibility to choose the direction ofairflow.

Cisco Catalyst 9500 models

The Cisco Unified Access Data Plane (UADP) Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) readyfor next-generation technologies with its programmable pipeline, microengine capabilities, and

template-based, configurable allocation of Layer 2 and Layer 3 forwarding, Access Control Lists(ACLs), and Quality-of-Service (QoS) entries.

Up to 6.4 Tbps switching capacity with up to 2 Bpps of forwarding performance.

Up to 36 MB of unified buffer per ASIC.

Intel 2.4-GHz x86 CPU with up to 120 GB of USB 3.0 or up to 960 GB of SATA SSD storage forcontainer-based application hosting.

Up to 32 nonblocking 100 Gigabit Ethernet QSFP28 ports.

Up to 32 nonblocking 40 Gigabit Ethernet QSFP+ ports.

Up to 48 nonblocking 25 Gigabit Ethernet SFP28 ports.

Up to 48 nonblocking 10 Gigabit Ethernet SFP+ ports.

Scalable Layer 3 routing (IPv4, IPv6, and multicast) tables and Layer 2 switching tables.

Hardware support for Application Hosting.

IEEE 802.1ba AV Bridging (AVB) built in to provide a better AV experience through improved timesynchronization and QoS.

Precision Time Protocol (PTP; IEEE 1588v2) provides accurate clock synchronization with sub-microsecond accuracy, making it suitable for distribution and synchronization of time and frequencyover the network.

Support for both static and dynamic NAT and Port Address Translation (PAT).

Platinum-rated (Greater than 90% efficient) AC and/pr DC power supplies.

Field-replaceable fan-tray units.

Meraki Cloud monitoring option.

Cisco IOS XE

This modern operating system for the enterprise provides support for model-driven programmability, on-box Python scripting, streaming telemetry, container-based application hosting, and patching for criticalbug fixes. Cisco IOSXE also has built-in defenses to protect against runtime attacks.

Simplified Campus Automation is designed to optimize the discovery and configuration of devices in

your network with a more streamlined simple and easy-to-use automation tool. With features suchas simplified discovery, IT can discover devices within the network within just a few steps. Alsoavailable is a more streamlined GUI that provides a better simplified view of switch configurationsand software details on a port-by-port basis.

Cisco Plug and Play (PnP) enabled: A simple, secure, unified, and integrated offering to ease newbranch or campus device rollouts or updates to an existing network.

Automated device provisioning: This is the ability to automate the process of upgrading softwareimages and installing configuration files on Cisco Catalyst switches when they are being deployed inthe network for the first time. Cisco provides both turnkey solutions such as Plug and Play (PnP) andoff-the-shelf tools such as Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) and Preboot Execution Environment (PXE)that enable an effortless and automated deployment.

API-driven configuration: Modern network switches such the Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series support awide range of automation features and provide robust open APIs over Network ConfigurationProtocol (NETCONF, RESTCONF and gNMI) using YANG data models for external tools, both off-the-shelf and custom built, to automatically provision network resources.

Granular visibility: Model-driven telemetry provides a mechanism to stream data from a switch to adestination. The data to be streamed is driven through subscription to a data set in a YANG model.The subscribed data set is streamed out to the destination at configured intervals. Additionally,Cisco IOS XE enables the push model, which provides near- real-time monitoring of the network,leading to quick detection and rectification of failures.

Seamless software upgrades and patching: To enhance OS resilience, Cisco IOS XE supportspatching, which provides fixes for critical bugs and security vulnerabilities between regularmaintenance releases. This support allows customers to add patches without having to wait for thenext maintenance release.

Cloud monitoring for Catalyst: Integrated view of Catalyst 9500 switches, seamlessly integratedinto the Meraki dashboard experience. Cloud monitoring provides the ability to view Catalyst 9500Series switch statistics, configuration, and troubleshooting capabilities. While the switch will beautomatically tagged with “Monitor Only” in the dashboard to distinguish from fully managed Merakiswitches, “Monitor Only” Catalyst 9500 switch appears and functions very similarly to Meraki MSswitches in the dashboard, including a visual representation of connected ports and trafficinformation. With cloud monitoring, Cisco IOS XE features, configuration and management continuesto be done via The various automation mechanisms are outlined above. As a monitoring tool, mostoperations are read-only. All live troubleshooting capabilities will also not result in persistentchanges to configuration following the troubleshooting operation.

WebUI: Embedded GUI-based device-management tool that provides the ability to provision thedevice, to simplify device deployment and manageability and to enhance the user experience.WebUI comes with the default image. There is no need to enable anything or install any license on

the device. You can use WebUI to build a day-1 configuration and from then on monitor andtroubleshoot the device without having to know how to use the CLI.

Platform benefits

Table 1. Platform benefits

Model	Catalyst 9500	Catalyst 9500X
Resiliency and High Availability
Software Maintenance Upgrade (SMU)	Yes	Yes
Cisco StackWise Virtual	Yes	Yes3
Stateful Switchover (SSO)	Yes (SVL)	Yes (SVL)3
In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU)	Yes (SVL)	Yes (SVL)3
Graceful Insertion and Removal (GIR)	Yes	Yes
MKA High Availability	Yes	No1
Enterprise Security
Trustworthy Solutions	Yes	Yes
Image Signing	Yes	Yes
Secure Boot	Yes	Yes
Cisco Trust Anchor Module	Yes	Yes
MACsec Encryption (256-bit AES-GCM)	Yes	Yes
Cisco WAN MACsec (256-bit AES-GCM)	No	Yes2,5
Object-Group ACLs (IPv4/IPv6)	Yes	Yes4

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches

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