Cisco Catalyst 9500 User Manual

Data Sheet

Cisco Catalyst 9500

Series Switches

Built for Security, IoT, and Cloud

© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 1 of 36

Contents

Product Overview 4

Platform Details 5

Platform Benefits 16

Software Requirements 20

Licensing 21

Specifications 23

Warranty 29

Cisco and Partner Services 29

Ordering Information 31

Cisco Capital 35

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© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 2 of 36

The Cisco® Catalyst® 9500 Series switches are the next generation of enterprise-class core and aggregation layer switches,

supporting full programmability and serviceability. Based on an x86 CPU, the Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series is Cisco’s lead

purpose-built fixed core and aggregation enterprise switching platform, built for security, IoT, and cloud. The switches
come with a 4-core x86, 2.4-GHz CPU, 16-GB DDR4 memory, and 16-GB internal storage.

The Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series is the industry’s first purpose-built 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet line of switches targeted
for the enterprise campus. These switches deliver unmatched table scale (MAC/route/ACL) and buffering for enterprise
applications. The Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series includes nonblocking 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet Quad Small Form-Factor
Pluggable (QSFP+, QSFP28) and 1, 10 and 25 Gigabit Ethernet Small Form-Factor Pluggable Plus (SFP/SFP+/SFP28)
switches with granular port densities that fit diverse campus needs. The 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 database,
cross-domain connectivity, and VPN Routing and Forwarding [VRF]-aware Locator/ID Separation Protocol [LISP]); and
network system virtualization with Cisco StackWise® virtual technology that are critical for their placement in the campus
core. The Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series also supports foundational high-availability capabilities such as patching, Graceful
Insertion and Removal (GIR), Cisco Nonstop Forwarding with Stateful Switchover (NSF/SSO), redundant platinum-rated
power supplies, and fans.

The foundation of Software-Defined Access

Advanced persistent security threats. The exponential growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Mobility everywhere.
Cloud adoption. All of these require a network fabric that integrates advanced hardware and software innovations to
automate, secure, and simplify customer networks. The goal of this network fabric is to enable customer revenue growth
by accelerating the rollout of business services.

The Cisco Digital Network Architecture (Cisco DNA™) with Software-Defined Access (SD-Access) is the network fabric
that powers business. It is an open and extensible, software-driven architecture that accelerates and simplifies your
enterprise network operations. The programmable architecture frees your IT staff from time-consuming, repetitive
network configuration tasks so they can focus instead on innovation that positively transforms your business. SD-Access
enables policy-based automation from edge to cloud with foundational capabilities. These include:

●

Simplified device deployment

●

Unified management of wired and wireless networks

●

Network virtualization and segmentation

●

Group-based policies

●

Context-based analytics

The Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series switches form the foundational building block for Software-Defined Access―Cisco’s
leading enterprise architecture.

© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 3 of 36

Cisco ONE Software

Cisco ONE™ Software offers a valuable and flexible way to buy software for the access, aggregation, core, WAN, and data
center domains. At each stage in the product lifecycle, Cisco ONE Software helps make buying, managing, and upgrading
your network and infrastructure software easier. Cisco ONE Software provides:

●

Flexible licensing models to smoothly distribute customers' software spending over time

●

Investment protection for software purchases through software services-enabled license portability

●

Access to updates, upgrades, and new technology from Cisco through Cisco Software Support Services (SWSS)

●

Lower cost of entry with the new Cisco ONE Subscription for Switching model

Cisco ONE for Access lets you manage your entire switching structure as a single, converged component. With one
management system and one policy for wired and wireless networks, it offers an efficient way to provide more secure
access.

Product Overview

Product highlights

●

Cisco Unified Access™ Data Plane (UADP) Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) ready for 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

●

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

●

Up to 3.2-Tbps switching capacity with up to 2 Bpps of forwarding performance

●

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

●

Platinum-rated AC power supplies

●

Up to 512,000 Flexible NetFlow (FNF) entries in hardware

●

Up to 36 MB of unified buffer per ASIC

●

Up to 212,000 routing entries (IPv4/IPv6) for high-end campus core and aggregation deployments

●

IPv6 support in hardware, providing wire-rate forwarding for IPv6 networks

●

IEEE 802.1ba AV Bridging (AVB) built in to provide a better AV experience through improved time synchronization
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 frequency over the network

●

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

●

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

●

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

© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 4 of 36

●

Cisco IOS® XE Software, a modern operating system for the enterprise with support for model-driven
programmability, on-box Python scripting, streaming telemetry, container-based application hosting, and
patching for critical bug fixes. The OS also has built-in defenses to protect against runtime attacks

●

StackWise Virtual technology, a network system virtualization technology that increases operational efficiency
and boosts nonstop communications and scaled system bandwidth

●

SD-Access: With the Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series, you can be part of the future of networking with features that
include:

◦ Policy-based automation from edge to cloud
◦ Segmentation and micro-segmentation made easy, with predictable performance and scalability
◦ Automation and network assurance through the Cisco DNA Center

™

Appliance

◦ Faster launch of new business services and significantly improved issue resolution time

●

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

●

Advanced security:

◦ Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA): You benefit from the power of machine learning to identify and take actions

toward threats or anomalies in your network, including malware detection in encrypted traffic and distributed
anomaly detection. Additionally, ETA is able to detect vulnerable implementations in encrypted traffic

◦ Support for AES-256 with the powerful MACsec 256-bit encryption algorithm available on all models
◦ Trustworthy systems: Secure Unique Device Identification (SUDI) support for Plug and Play, enabling tamper-proof

device identity capability, which secures zero-touch provisioning by allowing your device to show a certificate to the
server to be able to get onto your network

Platform Details

Switch models and configurations

All switches ship with the 650W/950W/1600W AC power supply as default

Figures 1 through 8 show the Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches.

Figure 1.

C9500-32C: Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series high-performance switch with 32x 100 Gigabit Ethernet

Figure 2.

C9500-32QC: Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series high-performance switch with 32x 40 Gigabit Ethernet

© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 5 of 36

Figure 3.

C9500-48Y4C: Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series high-performance switch with 48x 1/10/25G Gigabit Ethernet + 4x 100G Uplink

Figure 4.

C9500-24Y4C: Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series high-performance switch with 24x 1/10/25G Gigabit Ethernet + 4x 100G Uplink

Figure 5.

C9500-24Q: Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series switch with 24x 40 Gigabit Ethernet

Figure 6.

C9500-12Q: Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series switch with 12x 40 Gigabit Ethernet

Figure 7.

C9500-40X: Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series switch with 40x 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet

Figure 8.

C9500-16X: Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series switch with 16x 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet

© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 6 of 36

Model

Description

1G port
density

10G port
density

25G port
density

40G port
density

100G Port
Density

10G port
density with
breakout
cable

25G port
density with
breakout cable

C9500-32C

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series
high-performance 32-port
100 Gigabit Ethernet switch
with QSFP28

– – –

32 (64*)

32 (64*)

104 (208*)

96 (192*)

C9500-32QC

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series
high-performance 32-port
40 Gigabit Ethernet switch
with QSFP+

– – –

32 (64*)

16 (32*)

68 (136*)

48 (96*)

C9500-48Y4C

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series
high-performance 48-port
1/10/25G Gigabit Ethernet
switch with SFP28

48 (96*)

48 (96*)

48 (96*)

4 (8*)

4 (8*)

–

–

C9500-24Y4C

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series
high-performance 24-port
1/10/25G Gigabit Ethernet
switch with SFP28

24 (48)

24 (48)

24 (48*)

4 (8*)

4 (8*)

–

–

C9500-24Q

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series
24-port 40 Gigabit Ethernet
switch with QSFP+

– – –

24 (48)

-

16 (32)

–

C9500-12Q

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series
12-port 40 Gigabit Ethernet
switch with QSFP+

– – –

12 (24)

-

16 (32)

–

C9500-40X

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series
40-port 1/10 Gigabit
Ethernet Switch with
SFP/SFP+

48 (96)**

48 (96)**

–

2 (4) - 8 (16)

–

C9500-16X

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series
16-port 1/10 Gigabit
Ethernet switch with
SFP/SFP+

24 (48)**

24 (48)**

–

2.(4) - 8 (16)

–

Table 1 shows the Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series configurations.

Table 1. Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series configurations and port density

All numbers in the above table are for the standalone switch, except where indicated in parentheses () for StackWise Virtual:

*

Feature not available at FCS, will be available in future software releases

**

with uplink module.

© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 7 of 36

Network module

Description

C9500-NM-8X

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Network Module 8-port 1/10 Gigabit Ethernet with SFP/SFP+

C9500-NM-2Q

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Network Module 2-port 40 Gigabit Ethernet with QSFP+

Model

C9500-NM-8X

C9500-NM-2Q

C9500-32C

No

No

C9500-32QC

No

No

C9500-48Y4C

No

No

C9500-24Y4C

No

No

C9500-24Q

No

No

C9500-12Q

No

No

C9500-40X

Yes

Yes

C9500-16X

Yes

Yes

Network modules

The Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches support optional network modules for uplink ports on some of the
configurations.

The default switch configuration does not include the network module. When you purchase the switch, you can choose
from the network modules described in Tables 2 and 3.

Table 2. Network module numbers and descriptions

Table 3. Network module matrix

Figures 9 and 10 show the available network modules.

Figure 9.

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series network module 8-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet with SFP/SFP+

Figure 10.

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series network module 2-port 40 Gigabit Ethernet with QSFP+

© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 8 of 36

Product number

Description

C9500-ACCKITH-19I=

Accessory Kit for Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series – High-End - 19" rack mount

C9500-ACCKITH-23I=

Accessory Kit for Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series – High-End - 23" rack mount

C9500-4PTH-KIT=

Extension rails and brackets for four-point mounting for Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series – High-End

C9500-ACC-KIT-19I=

Accessory Kit for Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series - 19" rack mount

C9500-ACC-KIT-23I=

Accessory Kit for Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series - 23" rack mount

C9500-4PT-KIT=

Extension rails and brackets for four-point mounting for Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series

SSD-120G

Cisco pluggable USB3.0 SSD storage – 120G

C9K-F1-SSD-240G

Cisco pluggable SSD storage – 240G

C9K-F1-SSD-480G

Cisco pluggable SSD storage – 480G

C9K-F1-SSD-960G

Cisco pluggable SSD storage – 960G

Model

C9500­ACCKIT
H-19I=

C9500­ACCKIT
H-23I=

C9500­4PTH­KIT=

C9K-F1­SSD­240G

C9500­ACC­KIT-19I=

C9500­ACC­KIT-23I=

C9500­4PT­KIT=

SSD­120G

C9K-F1­SSD­240G

C9K-F1­SSD­480G

C9K-F1­SSD­960G

C9500-32C

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

C9500-32QC

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

C9500-48Y4C

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

C9500-24Y4C

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

C9500-24Q

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

C9500-12Q

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

C9500-40X

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

C9500-16X

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

Accessories

The Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches support optional accessories.

The default switch configuration does not include the accessories – these need to be selected during configuration.

Table 4. Accessories and descriptions

Table 5. Accessory matrix

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Model

FAN-T4-R (Max # of fans)

C9K-T1-FANTRAY (Max # of fans)

C9500-32C

Yes (5)

No

C9500-32QC

No

Yes (4)

C9500-48Y4C

No

Yes (4)

C9500-24Y4C

No

Yes (4)

C9500-24Q

Yes (5)

No

C9500-12Q

Yes (5)

No

C9500-40X

Yes (5)

No

C9500-16X

Yes (5)

No

Figures 11 and 12 show some of the available accessories.

Figure 11.

240G SSD storage

Power supplies and fan tray

The Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches support dual 1+1 redundant power supplies. The switches ship with one power
supply by default. The second power supply can be purchased at the time the switch is ordered or at a later time. If only
one power supply is installed, it should always be in power supply bay #1.

The switches also ship with up to five field-replaceable variable-speed fans. These have front-to-back airflow and can
operate with up to one individual fan failure. The fan trays support fan-tray Online Insertion and Removal (OIR) and can
support a maximum fan speed of up to 24,000 rpm.

Table 6 shows the maximum fans and fan trays for each configuration.

Table 6. Fan and fan tray matrix

Figures 12 through 14 show the power supplies available for the Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series.

Figure 12.

950W AC power supply

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Power supply
feature

PWR-C4­950WAC-R

PWR-C4­950WDC-R

C9K-PWR­650WAC-R

C9K-PWR­930WDC-R

C9K-PWR­1600WAC-R

C9K-PWR­1600WDC-R

Power max rating

950W

950W

650W

930W

1600W

1600W

Input-voltage
range and
frequency

AC 90 to 264
VAC, 47 to 63 Hz

-36Vdc~ -72Vdc

AC 90VAC to
264VAC, 47 to 63
Hz

DC -40VDC to ­72VDC

AC 90VAC to
140VAC and
180VAC to
264VAC 47 to 63
Hz

DC -40VDC to ­72VDC

Power supply
efficiency

94%

91% at 48Vin,
50% load

94% (Typ)

92% (Typ)

94% (Typ)

92% (Typ)

Input current

AC 10A at
115VAC, 5 A at
230VAC

22.6A @ 48Vin,
950W

AC 6.8A Max at
115VAC, 3.4 A
Max at 230VAC
(when full
loading)

DC 23A max at ­48VDC (when full
loading)

AC 10.5A Max at
115VAC (1050W),

7.8 A Max at
230VAC (1600W)

DC 40A max at ­48VDC (when full
loading)

Output ratings

12V at 79A, 12V
at 3A

950W

12Vmain at 54A,
12Vsb at 3A

12Vmain at 54A,
12Vsb at 3A

12Vmain at 133A,
12Vsb at 3A

12Vmain at 133A,
12Vsb at 3A

Output holdup time

AC = 10 ms at
maximum load

1ms

AC = 20
ms minimum for
system

AC = 8
ms minimum for
system

AC = 20
ms minimum for
system

AC = 5 ms
minimum for
system

Power-supply input
receptacles

AC IEC 60320
C16

AC IEC 60320 C14

Molex Minifit
44540-1001

AC IEC 60320 C16

Amphenol C10­638976-000

Power cord rating

AC 15A

DC 40A

AC 10A

DC 40A

AC 15A

DC 70A

Figure 13.

650W AC power supply

Figure 14.

1600W AC power supply

Tables 7 and 8 provides more details on the Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series power supplies.

Table 7. Power supply specifications

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