Based on Cisco^® Cloud Scale technology the Cisco Nexus^® 9300-GX switches are the next generation of fixed Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches. The platform introduces a fully backward-compatible 400G optical interface Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable - Double Density (QSFP-DD) to transparently migrate existing data center fabrics from 40-Gbps and 100-Gbps speeds to 400 Gbps. The platform provides investment protection for customers delivering highly flexible layer 2 and layer 3 scalability and performance to meet the changing needs of virtualized data centers and automated cloud environments. The 9300-GX also offers various lower port speed and desities including 10 25 50 & 200 Gbps using breakouts.

Cisco provides two modes of operation for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches. Organizations can deploy Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI^™) or Cisco Nexus switch environments (Cisco NX-OS mode).

The Cisco ACI solution is a holistic intent-driven architecture with centralized automation and policy-based application profiles. It provides a robust transport network for dynamic workloads and is built on a network fabric that combines time-tested protocols with new innovations to create a highly flexible scalable and resilient architecture of low-latency high-bandwidth links. This fabric delivers a network that can support the most demanding and flexible data center environments.

Designed for the programmable network the Cisco NX-OS operating system automates configuration and management for customers who want to take advantage of the DevOps operation model and tool sets.

The platform hardware also enables collection of comprehensive Cisco Tetration Analytics^™ telemetry information at line rate across all the ports without adding any latency to the packets or negatively affecting switch performance. In addition the product is designed to support innovative technologies such as Streaming Statistics Export (SSX) enhancing the visibility into switch statistics right from the ASIC. Through this application users can better understand network performance without any impact on the switch control plane or CPU.