Nexus 9200 vs 9300

[Steven Williams]

What is the fundamental difference between Nexus 9200 and 9300? The way I am understanding is that 9200s will only run NX-OS mode so no future with ACI if you decided to do that. And beside that just port speeds and density. 

[Mark Malone]

Hi
more routes , qos , throughput etc , 9300 can 8x10GB mods and more think 92 is 4 only , 3 times stacking throughput on 93s
you can get 10GB 9300s too , anyway the sheets below will give you all the major diffs between them

the buffers which can be important on heavy access switches is higher on 9300 which will prevent output drops as frequently

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-9200-series-switches/nb-06-cat9200-ser-data-sheet-cte-en.html

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-9300-series-switches/data_sheet-c78-738977.html

[colin.lynch]

Those links are for the Catalyst 9300 / 9200

The Nexus 9200 / 9300 are as per the below.

Nexus 9300

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/nexus-9000-series-switches/datasheet-c78-742284.html

Nexus 9200

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/nexus-9000-series-switches/datasheet-c78-735989.html

Fundamental difference is that 9200's are NX-OS mode only, use Cisco custom ASICS and only support Ethernet.

9300's support ACI/NX-OS modem use merchant silicon and can support FC/FCoE as well as FEX's

I did a comparison of 2 similar 9200/9300 ToR switches below.

Nexus 9200 (N92160YC-X)
NX-OS Mode Only
Cisco ASICS (Tahoe)
20-40MB Shared system buffer
1 -2 microsecond latency
No FEX support

Nexus 9300 (93180YC-FX)
Dual capability ACI and NX-OS mode,
Merchant Silicon (Broadcom Tomahawk Trident 2+ (T2+))
40MB Shared system buffer
1 microsecond latency
FEX Supported
Smart buffer capability
Supports native FC 16/32G & FcoE Interfaces (on FX/FX2 models)
Line rate 256-bit encryption on all ports (MACSec) (on FX/FX2 models)

[jkaya]

It should be noted the 9300 shifted away from merchant silicon to custom Cisco [CloudScale] ASICs around the same time the 9200 series was introduced. EX, FX, FX2, FX3 etc are all/exclusively Cisco/CloudScale leaf ASICs [the GX being combined leaf/spine] and the 9200 initially used spine ASICs. 

Since then Broadcom silicon support has been maintained in other Nexus lines (3K, 9500R, etc)