Cisco Nexus 9396TX vs HPE Aruba CX 8320
Side-by-side specifications from the vendors' own documents. The Cisco Nexus 9396TX is a 2U top-of-rack datacenter switch offering 48 ports of 100M/1G/10GBASE-T copper and an uplink expansion slot supporting up to 12 ports of 40G QSFP+. The Aruba CX 8320 switch series is an enterprise 1U campus core and datacenter top-of-rack switch delivering wire-speed 10GbE and 40GbE performance.
| Cisco Nexus 9396TX | HPE Aruba CX 8320 | |
|---|---|---|
| Brand | Cisco | HPE |
| Status | end-of-sale | end-of-sale |
| Released | Apr 2014 | Jun 2017 |
| Form factor | 2U fixed switch | 1U fixed switch |
| Access ports | 48x 100M/1G/10GBASE-T RJ-45 copper ports | — |
| Uplink slot | Supports N9K-M6PQ (6x 40G) or N9K-M12PQ (12x 40G) uplink modules | — |
| Switching capacity | Up to 1.92 Tbps / 1,400 Mpps forwarding rate | Up to 2.5 Tbps |
| Form factor | 2U rack mount with dual redundant power supplies | 1U fixed switch with redundant power and fans |
| Cooling | Front-to-back or back-to-front airflow fan trays | — |
| Port options | — | 48x 10GbE SFP+ with 6x 40GbE QSFP+, or 32x 40GbE QSFP+ |
| Forwarding capacity | — | Up to 1,905 Mpps |
| High availability | — | Aruba VSX multi-chassis redundancy |
| Cooling airflow | — | Front-to-back (port-to-power) or back-to-front (power-to-port) |
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