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Product Overview
The Cisco MDS 9396T 32 Gbps 96 Port two rack unit Fibre Channel switch provides high speed Fibre Channel
connectivity in the SAN. This switch offers analytics and telemetry capability built into its Application-Specific
Integrated Circuit (ASIC) platform. The Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe)-ready switch allows seamless
transition to Fibre Channel Non-Volatile Memory Express (FC-NVMe) workloads whenever available without
any hardware upgrade in the SAN. This high density, highly reliable and scalable, enterprise class semi-modular
switch is ideal for medium to large departmental SANs.
The Cisco MDS 9396T switch has the following major features:
• 96x32-Gbps line rate Enhanced Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP+) ports provide an aggregate bandwidth
of 3 Tbps per switch for highly scalable designs for hyperscale environments that drive several thousands
of virtual machine instances within the rack. This switch provides at least six ports that can be configured
with up to 8270 Buffer-To-Buffer (B2B) credits that can be connected to remote data centers as far as
612 km (380 miles) using native Fibre Channel connectivity at 32 Gbps speeds. These distances become
even greater at lower speeds.
• Provides consistent 32-Gbps quality performance for every Fibre Channel port on the switch.
• Provides availability and reliability similar to the previous generations of Cisco MDS 9000 Series
Switches. Additionally, port-channel link members can be used across the six 16-port port groups providing
additional high availability.
• Provides minimum configuration option of 48x32-Gbps Fibre Channel ports in the base variant, which
can be enabled in increments of 16 ports to up to 96 ports. This allows four possible configurations of
48, 64, 80, and 96 ports.
• Supports enterprise-class features such as Slow Drain Detection and Isolation, Virtual SAN (VSAN)
identifier, Access Control Lists (ACLs) for hardware-based intelligent frame processing, Smart Zoning,
and migration from fabricwide Quality of Service (QoS) from SAN islands to enterprisewide storage
networks. Traffic encryption is optionally available to meet stringent security requirements.
• Provides intelligent diagnostics tools such as Inter-Switch Link (ISL) diagnostics, HBA diagnostics with
leading HBA vendors, read diagnostic parameters, protocol decoding, network analysis tools, and
integrated Cisco Call Home.
• Supports the Virtual Machine Identifier (VMID) feature that provides visibility into virtual machines
that are accessing the storage devices in the fabric.
• Supports Representational State Transfer (REST) and Cisco NX-API capabilities.
Cisco MDS 9396T Multilayer Fabric Switch Hardware Installation Guide
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