Cisco Catalyst 6509-E vs HPE Aruba CX 8400
Side-by-side specifications from the vendors' own documents. The Cisco Catalyst 6509-E is the benchmark 9-slot enterprise core chassis switch that powered global enterprise networks, internet exchange points, and datacenter cores for nearly two decades. The Aruba CX 8400 is an enterprise modular chassis core and aggregation switch designed for massive campus and datacenter backbones.
| Cisco Catalyst 6509-E | HPE Aruba CX 8400 | |
|---|---|---|
| Brand | Cisco | HPE |
| Status | end-of-sale | current |
| Released | Oct 2004 | Jun 2017 |
| Form factor | modular chassis | 8-slot modular chassis |
| Chassis slots | 9 | — |
| Supervisor slots | Slots 5 and 6 (redundant supervisors) | — |
| Line card slots | 7 payload line card slots (Slots 1-4, 7-9) | — |
| Chassis height | 15U rack mount | — |
| System bandwidth | Up to 2 Tbps with Supervisor 2T | — |
| Power supplies | Dual hot-swappable power supplies up to 6000W each | — |
| Legacy | One of the most widely deployed modular chassis in networking history | — |
| Form factor | — | 8U 8-slot modular enterprise chassis |
| Switching capacity | — | Up to 19.2 Tbps system bandwidth |
| Forwarding capacity | — | Up to 7.14 Bpps throughput |
| Management modules | — | Dual hot-swappable Management Modules (active/standby) |
| Fabric modules | — | Up to 3 active fabric modules with N+1 redundancy |
| Line cards | — | 8 payload line card slots (supporting up to 256 10G or 64 100G ports) |
| High availability | — | Hitless stateful failover, VSX multi-chassis bonding, and non-stop routing |
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