Organizations everywhere recognize that changing application environments are creating new demands for the IT infrastructure that supports them. Application workloads are deployed across a mix of virtualized and nonvirtualized server and storage infrastructure requiring a network infrastructure that provides consistent connectivity security and visibility across a range of bare-metal virtualized and cloud computing environments:

• Application instances are created dynamically. As a result the provisioning modification and removal of application network connectivity needs to be dynamic as well.
• Business units demand accelerated application deployments. IT departments have to provide shared IT infrastructure to address time-to-market needs and to increase their return on investment (ROI).
• With organizations deploying a mix of custom open source and off-the-shelf commercial applications IT departments must manage both security and quality of service (QoS) for environments that support multitenancy.
• Applications have been transitioning over time to a less monolithic scale-out multinode model. IT infrastructure that supports this model must scale with the speed of business and support both 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.

The Cisco Nexus 9300 platform consists of fixed-port switches designed for top-of-rack (ToR) and middle-of-row (MoR) deployment in data centers that support enterprise applications service provider hosting and cloud computing environments. They are Layer 2 and 3 nonblocking 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet switches with up to 2.56 terabits per second (Tbps) of internal bandwidth.