C1-N9K-C9508 Cisco ONE Nexus 9508 Switch Chassis

Product Overview: Cisco ONE Nexus 9508 Switch Chassis

The Cisco C1-N9K-C9508 ONE Nexus 9508 is a high-performance modular switch chassis designed for enterprise and data center environments. Built under Cisco’s renowned Nexus 9000 Series, this switch delivers scalability, flexibility, and advanced Layer 3 networking capabilities to support modern network architectures.

General Product Information

• Manufacturer: Cisco Systems, Inc.
• Part Number: C1-N9K-C9508
• Product Line: Cisco Nexus
• Series: 9000 Series
• Model: 9508
• Product Name: ONE Nexus 9508 Switch
• Product Type: Modular Switch Chassis

Interfaces and Port Configuration

Port and Slot Architecture

This Cisco Nexus 9508 chassis features a modular design that allows organizations to customize their networking infrastructure according to performance and capacity needs.

• Uplink Ports: None
• Stack Ports: None
• Modular Design: Supported
• Expansion Slots: 8 available slots

Expansion and Scalability Options

Expansion Slot Capabilities

The Nexus 9508 switch chassis is engineered for future growth, offering multiple expansion options to enhance network throughput and reliability.

• Total Expansion Slots: 8
• Supported Slot Types:
• Line Cards
• Switch Fabric Modules
• Supervisor Engines

Network Performance and Communication

Layer Support

Designed for advanced enterprise networking, the Cisco Nexus 9508 supports robust Layer 3 switching, enabling efficient routing and traffic management across complex networks.

• Supported Network Layer: Layer 3

Management and Control Features

Administration and Monitoring

This Cisco switch chassis is fully manageable, allowing IT administrators to monitor, configure, and optimize network performance with ease.

• Manageable: Yes

Power and Reliability Specifications

Power Supply Requirements

Built for mission-critical environments, the Cisco Nexus 9508 supports redundant power supplies to ensure high availability and uninterrupted network operations.

• Power Source: Power Supply
• Redundant Power Supply: Supported

Unpacking the Cisco C1-N9K-C9508 ONE Chassis

The C1-N9K-C9508 is the central physical framework of the Nexus 9508 switch. The "ONE" designation signifies a specific offering bundle, often including essential components for a streamlined deployment. This 8-slot chassis is a masterpiece of engineering, providing a perfect balance of port density, power efficiency, and cooling capacity. Its robust metal construction is built for 24/7 operation in demanding data center environments, supporting front-to-back or back-to-front airflow configurations to align with hot aisle/cold aisle designs.

Chassis Architecture and Key Physical Attributes

The chassis architecture is designed for maximum uptime and serviceability. Critical components are fully redundant and hot-swappable, ensuring non-disruptive operations during maintenance or upgrades.

Slot Configuration and Flexibility

The eight vertical slots offer exceptional flexibility. Typically, two slots are dedicated to supervisor engines (for redundancy), while the remaining six slots are available for high-density line cards. This configuration allows for a massive scale-out of network interfaces, from 1/10/25/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet to emerging 400 Gigabit Ethernet, future-proofing your infrastructure investment.

Redundant Power and Cooling Systems

The chassis supports multiple, hot-swappable AC or DC power supply units (PSUs) in an N+1 or N+N redundancy model. Its advanced, variable-speed fan trays are arranged in a redundant configuration, providing precise, per-card cooling that dynamically adjusts based on thermal sensors, drastically reducing power consumption during lower utilization periods.

The Power of Cisco NX-OS: A Robust Operating System

The Nexus 9508 chassis is powered by Cisco NX-OS, a dedicated data center operating system built for stability, programmability, and security. NX-OS provides a feature-rich environment that is both familiar to Cisco engineers and innovative for modern automation.

Key Software Features and Capabilities

The software-defined capabilities of NX-OS transform the hardware into an intelligent, programmable entity.

Stability with Continuous Availability

Features like In-Service Software Upgrades (ISSU) and Graceful Insertion and Removal (GIR) allow for patching, upgrades, and hardware changes without causing network-wide outages, meeting the requirements of mission-critical, always-on enterprises.

Pervasive Telemetry and Analytics

NX-OS integrates deep visibility through features like Model-Driven Telemetry (MDT), which streams structured data (JSON, GPB) to collectors for real-time analytics. This enables proactive network monitoring, faster troubleshooting, and data-driven capacity planning.

Automation and Programmability

With full support for Python scripting, APIs (including NX-API REST), and integration with Ansible, Puppet, and Chef, the Nexus 9508 is a prime candidate for DevOps and NetOps automation workflows, reducing manual errors and accelerating service delivery.

Deployment Use Cases and Applications

The scalability and feature set of the Nexus 9508 chassis make it ideal for several pivotal roles within the data center network architecture.

Data Center Core/Spine Layer

As a spine switch in a Cisco ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure) fabric or a traditional CLOS network design, the 9508 provides the high-bandwidth, low-latency forwarding required for East-West traffic. Its high radix (number of ports) allows it to interconnect a large number of leaf switches, creating a scalable, non-blocking fabric.

High-Density 100G/400G Spine

When populated with high-speed line cards, the chassis can serve as an ultra-high-density spine, aggregating traffic from dozens of 10G/25G server access leaves or acting as an interconnect for high-performance compute and storage clusters.

Large Enterprise Network Core

For large campuses or enterprise backbones, the Nexus 9508 offers the reliability, security feature set (VRF, ACLs, TrustSec), and multicast capabilities needed to consolidate and transport critical business data across the organization.

Massively Scalable Cloud Gateway

Its ability to handle massive routing tables (via BGP and EVPN) makes it an excellent candidate for a cloud gateway, interconnecting on-premises data centers with public cloud providers or serving as the aggregation point for multiple virtualized environments.

Supervisor and Line Card Ecosystem

The true power of the modular Nexus 9508 is unlocked through its selection of supervisor engines and interface modules.

Supervisor Engines: The Control Plane Brain

Supervisor engines, such as the N9K-SUP-A/B or the newer N9K-SUP-C/CXL, provide the system's control plane, management plane, and the integrated data plane fabric. Choosing a supervisor generation impacts overall system performance, feature availability, and port density.

Fabric Scalability with Generation 3 Line Cards

When paired with Generation 3 line cards (identifiable by "-XL" in the model), supported by supervisors like the SUP-CXL, the chassis can deliver up to 36 Tbps of system bandwidth per slot. This enables non-blocking performance for even the most densely populated 100G and 400G configurations.

High-Density Interface Line Cards

The portfolio of line cards is vast, allowing precise tailoring of the switch to current and future needs.

Ethernet Variants

Cards range from 48-port 1/10G SFP+ to 36-port 100G QSFP28, and the groundbreaking 32-port 400G QSFP-DD modules. This allows a single chassis to scale from hundreds of 10G server connections to a massive fabric of high-speed interconnects.

Specialized Modules

Beyond standard Ethernet, modules are available for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) for converged storage networking, and high-performance encryption cards for securing data in flight at line rate.

Strategic Advantages and Investment Protection

Choosing the Cisco Nexus 9508 chassis is a strategic decision that offers long-term benefits beyond immediate technical specifications.

Unified Fabric Operations

As part of the broader Cisco Nexus and ACI portfolio, the 9508 enables a unified operational model across the data center. Common tools, APIs, and NX-OS commands simplify staff training and reduce operational complexity.

Integration with Cisco's Intent-Based Networking

The chassis fully participates in Cisco's intent-based networking (IBN) solutions like ACI and Data Center Network Manager (DCNM). This shifts operations from manual, device-by-device configuration to a policy-driven model that automates network deployment, compliance, and troubleshooting based on business intent.

Design for Redundancy and High Availability

Best practice dictates deploying dual supervisors, dual fabric modules (internal to the chassis), power supplies in a grid-redundant or N+N mode, and dual-homed connections from every downstream device. This holistic approach to redundancy ensures no single point of failure.

Virtual PortChannel (vPC) and Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation

Utilizing vPC technology is paramount when deploying the 9508 as a spine or core pair. vPC allows a server or leaf switch to uplink to both chassis in a redundant pair via a single EtherChannel, eliminating spanning-tree blocked ports and using all available bandwidth while providing sub-second failover.