Cisco Catalyst 9500 - Bandwidth Capacity

[S.AlQaisi]

Due to limited budget, I've been challenged to a network design where the distribution switches are C9500-24Q (only pair of them in virtual stack) and the access switches are C9407 about 13-15 of them. The access switches "C9407" have 2 SUP each, and each switch has 2 uplinks (one to each C9500), The C9407 have 50-75% end devices connected to their line cards (LC-48U), bandwidth wise will be about 8-10Gbps total for each C9407 switch. The plan is to use QSFP at each side for the uplinks.

My understanding that will probably lead to a bottle neck if we compare it to Cisco oversubscription best design practice, but technically based on the ports capacity and the data sheet for C9500-24Q there will be no issue. I'm new to 9k family,, any idea or suggestion please??

[Muhammad Awais Khan]

Hi,

The switching capacity of single 9500-24Q is 1920 Gbps as per datasheet which will be good enough to cover your requirements. Furthermore you will be having virtual stackwise and uplinks from your 9407 will be distributed across  both core.

You can aggregate the bandwidth of the uplinks and can compare with the throughput and switching capacity of 9500.

Datasheet link:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-9500-series-switches/nb-06-cat9500-ser-data-sheet-cte-en.html

[S.AlQaisi]

@Muhammad Awais Khan Thanks for the advice, my understanding that the 1920 Gbps is for the virtual stack, 24*40G= 960*2 = 1920Gbps, don't you think that?

[Muhammad Awais Khan]

@S.AlQaisiYes you are right, it is mentioned also in the datasheet table with a note, sorry missed that :)

[balaji.bandi]

C9500-24Q: Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series switch with 24x 40G Gigabit Ethernet

Is good enough for your kind of requirement, we are not sure how fully loaded and what application you have on the enviroment - southside access switch like 94XX

based on the requirement you can uplink more links to LAG.

Technically they are capable.

[S.AlQaisi]

@balaji.bandi This is what I think as well, technically they are capable.

There will be different systems connected to the 9407 like less than 20% Cisco AP, the APs will be limited to 100Mbps or less, 20% CCTV which go between 5-20Mbps for each camera, 35% are different systems like VOIP, Alarms ..etc. the rest will be empty ports. Hope that helped.

[balaji.bandi]

Sure I never have seen a deployment that has port fully 100% utilized.