Cisco Catalyst 9600: The New Campus Core Network on TechWiseTV

I think it was just about two years ago Cisco rolls out intent based networking along with the foundational architecture to support that software-defined access now two big crucial elements that only Cisco is able to do the you ADP ASIC as well as the consistent operating system iOS XE consistency is definitely the ID and across the entire multifamily line we have seen this the same chip the same binaries the same release schedules all that has been part of the catalyst 9000 family which started off with the 9300 stackable access switch replacing the 3650 and 3850 the 9400 modular access switch for the campus took on the 4,500 line and then the 9500 40 gig optimize taking on the 4500 X then in 2018 not that long ago we rolled out that 9200 no big surprise taken out 2960 xx our series and then a big surprise in 9800 which is where we took arrow s now put it on iOS XE because we're talking wired wireless access throughout the entire line but now in 2019 the only thing not touched up to this point was a campus or the the core part of the network so for today's show we get to look at closely the catalyst 9600 for the campus and the core Mohammed Imam is back to join us in the lab and get all the details on this guy right here but for now let's go to the lounge and check in with Himanshu all right Himanshu welcome to techwisetv it's good to have you back thank you oh yes yeah we've done we've done it some stuff on digital building and some of the things I think in the past but yeah a little bit too long so I'm glad to have you back and you've got big announcements to be made now we do this is huge so I'll let you do the honors but it's a new 9,600 the catalyst 9600 can you tell me what that is where does it fit and how does it change things so Robert you remember we launched the entire catalyst 9000 line a year and a half ago yeah for the foundation of intent-based networking strategy right we launched 93 94 95 we came back in Austin 92 last year right but you know one thing was missing there was one more thing needed to refresh the entire portfolio and so then I'm proud to announce that launching the 9600 today that's going to be a next-gen modular core platform for the campus Wow well so let's be real clear here this is a I always regret saying replacement because this is that we're talking about some very valuable products but they've been around a long time and continually improved from what the cat 6k family how much is obviously we have some legacy here that we're carrying on in the core of the network so this is a core focused switch is that is that what we're focused here it is it is a core focus switch and you know the core is a very very important area of any network it's the backbone you're right right so if the core is down the entire network is down there'll be no wireless then we know wired if the core is down so a course which needs to be resilient it needs to support high availability yeah right you to your point about cat 6k with the cat 6k we it quad cat 6k was the gold standard for campus core right we build that so it supported all the features that you ever need on a campus like 20 years of innovation and it's supported resiliency and high availability with the 9600 we are carrying forward that and we are raising the bar on that really all right we support all the cat 6k features ok right bring that innovation right or 9600 but then we are raising the bar within 10 based networking and some of the other innovations that you brought yeah as we go through some of these features I am kind of curious about you know what really does need to be different you know in terms of why someone would be looking at making a change to 96 if things are humming along in their core you know with a with another 6k platform where are they looking at the differences interview first I want about this notion of we've got different roles in terms of architecture that are being played now as well where does the 96 fit in terms of how customers are actually deploying these products let me answer that in a bit going back to the cat 6k portion right yeah so with the with the 9600 we we've taken leaps and bounds in performance okay the 9600 is the 25 terabit chassis yep right it can do 40 gig hundred year 25 gig etc and I think we get into the technical details in a little bit so we do all of that but then it's purpose-built for the campus unlike some of our competitors they're leveraged switches from say other parts of the network okay this is purpose-built for the campus so it supports scale and resiliency needed for the campus okay right it has integrated secure and we are taking you we have max sex security via flexible NetFlow these remain huge huge competitive differentiators for us okay right and we're continuing to build on that the other important point that you brought up right the core a course which can have multiple roles okay right the cat 6k for instance supported the l3 core but then it also supported MPLS for a provider edge power network with the 9600 we can support those two roles but then we can also support the SD a border if you say if you remember we launched so fine access time we launched those first set of a 9000 switches right right okay with a 9600 we can support three roles in a campus core okay for a customer that means that you standardized across those three roles and leads to you know lower cost of investment low and CEO etc because I think there are some customers who are still very much in a certain architecture they're comfortable with but they're looking perhaps of what we're doing with intent-based networking and what we can do with a software to find access and they're saying well how do i migrate and I don't want to make any purchases that prohibit me from taking advantage of that and you're saying no this is a platform that's with a single platform you're able to then go in any direction you need absolutely absolutely no standardized in one platform and not just on one platform for the core if you look at the other nine case catalyst 9600 has the same ASIC the same operating system as those other platforms so customer can standardize for their campus and I like that because actually and that was a promise we made almost two years ago a year and a half and the notion was it was it we this is a big move for Cisco because we've had everything from you know the cat 2 KS 3 KS 4 KS 6 KS in this type of thing and each one might be on a slightly different software train and a slightly different release schedule and things like this and it's worked well for its time but now we've got a family that's saying hey we've got the exact same all the way down to the binary level so that releases are now coming out more consistently the features and accessing everything you do with them is also more consistent I would assume as well absolutely right so it's the same binary image as you said for all of these all the cat line case was talking to the car to a customer the other day they have standardized on 94 and 95 and they're excited about 96 coming out because now that that standardization of the 96 is much easier for them that's right tax savings huge savings for a castle so when I comes to migrating how prepared are we from migrating you know customers who are already in the 6k line is this what kind of a situation is that so we ran extensive tests with a lot of our customers pre-launch the right 50-plus customers have tested this very large enterprises have tested this and I think we've got create feedback so far the box is ready to migrate right I think there are two things our touch upon there one we we have all the cat 6k feature sets you know that we mentioned the layer 2 layer 3 services the security integrated security but then we've we've added a lot more features software-defined access analytics and insights are abilities we've added things like Etta o in critics get that one next up but yeah we've added programmability and you know a lot of our competitors talk about programmability at the OS layer right I think one thing I want to touch upon is that we've Cisco's got program ability not just at the OS but on the ASIC on the OS and on the controller DNA Center so we've got programmability everywhere nice ok so that you so anybody that's moved in that direction is looking to automate more of what they're doing or or continue then this is not this is gonna fit right into that that scheme as well is they go into its own right over tools that they're using that manage this and that side of things it'll be ok so I'm kind of curious if how you might highlight where people are gonna save well you know we're always asked someone to invest in a new platform and such like this and what kind of things do we look at where this is gonna make a difference in someone's network from a cost perspective right that's a good point so let's see why people are looking for those higher speeds right there's a huge there's a lot of data coming into the network Wireless is bringing in a lot of data on the access switches we are migrating from one gig to M gig right a lot a lot of a lot of our customers that are adopting M gig as the axis which is migrated to higher speeds customers need higher speeds in aggregation and core yeah Cisco provides Cisco's the only vendor to provide multi rate 1025 gig optics so it gives our customers a very easy migration path without changing any fiber-optic cables to go from 10 quick to 25 gig again Cisco's the only vendor who does that so former customer perspective they can they are they can deploy that 10 25 gig optic right be ready for that 25-year speed oh wow so you got a nice path to go at your own speed through that copper plant and then when you're ready for the fiber as well we've got those cards and we go all the way up to 50 kick I believe even on some of these cards yeah we can you know be they'll be the small upgrade or the supervisor we can go up to higher higher speeds as well and the same box supports not just 10 25 but supports forty hundred gig as well right so it's it's a standard box okay for that motion yeah so before I jump over to the lab here and it's a final question to just understand from your perspective what's most important to remember what do you want everybody to understand about this new platform the new platform is a member of the catalyst 9000 it supports all those awesome features and it supports the rich heritage of cat6 kay is ready for that migration if customers are looking for that so given up and up there's still plenty more to go right and we're ready for the future because it's 20 years on that previous platform this one's got a lot of big shoes to fill anybody got innovation here yeah absolutely hey thank you so much thanks for appreciate you joining me I'm gonna go check in the lab all right Mohammed how are you doing hey Rob hey are you so Wow this right here on the desk in front of us this is the the successor this is what you've been waiting to show us yeah absolutely cat6 care has been the gold standard for the campus core for decades you're right this is the one we are coming and we are taking this gold standard and modernizing it and that's what we have as catalysts 9,600 okay so it's noticeably smaller than what we're used to seeing but I don't want to take you off your pace here so walk us through what do we need to understand all right this is smaller it's only 17 inches in depth okay very unlike some of the other core devices that we have seen in the industry it's a modular chassis right and we have a very simple but very powerful and resilient architecture here we have changed the architecture from the cat's XK if you remember the architecture that we have here of course is a modular chassis it consists of a chassis it consists of some other modular components like fan tray and power supplies but the most important component here is this supervisor of course right membranes this supervisor is coming with a centralized architecture which means all of the processing that you have to do is happening on this supervisor there is not any intelligence on the line card which makes it transparent which makes it fast hire mtbf and a lot of different advantages we get with this simple architecture okay now this chassis is capable of 25.6 terabits per second okay wow that's a lot of bandwidth that this chassis is capable of now the supervisor that we are introducing soup one is capable of 9.6 terabits per second okay and it gives 3.2 terabits per second capability on each of the line card slot okay with the new supervisor that we are introducing you can go up to 2.4 terabits per second on each of the line cards okay now we have simplified everything okay the line cards that we are introducing is just 2 and those 2 line cards are going to support the speeds from 1 all the way 200 gig okay oh nice ok we have a line card and let me show you here this is the 40 gig and 100 gig line card very simple architecture you don't see any kind of a 6 or even a stub a 6 here and that makes it very very simple we also have the 10 gig and 25 gig line card which is down here let me pull this out here this one has one gig speed 10 gig is speed and 25 Giga speed okay and this is a same very simple architecture there's not much in here noise stop ASIC is just connects to a passive backplane in the ASIC in the chassis okay ok now this also comes with the fan tray you remember the fan tray indicate unless 9400 which can be serviced from both sides from the front as well as the bag it this has the same capability okay great and it comes with four modular power supplies and the power supply is also coming in a very compact form factor okay and gives you enough power with redundancy okay to run the chassis when we build the catalyst 9600 we built it ground up for high availability and resiliency core of the network is super important for our customers right yep our entire network relies on the core and that means our entire businesses rely on the core as well okay and so we have kept in mind the high availability and resiliency on every single step during the development of the catalyst 9600 both from the software perspective right from the hardware perspective but also from the network and protocols perspective okay now the catalyst 9600 is Bill is based on the same foundational elements that we have in the rest of the catalyst 9k family okay so that is based on the UID p 3.0 as the ASIC okay the supervisor that we have has three a six so one of these supervisors these supervisors has three a six here which is up here and a CPU okay it's it's a very powerful ASIC as we have seen with the rest of the catalyst 9k family and with three of them it extends it to nine point six terabytes per second but from software perspective this is based on iOS XE okay so this is a fascinating part to me is that you guys have maintained you promised two years ago that everything was gonna follow this train same ASIC same operating system therefore now everything becomes much more streamlined in terms of releases and updates it's across the entire line theoretically they may start coming out faster if they haven't already because now all the investment is going into these new platforms so we're seeing that that promise lived out here as well great point in fact the iOS XE release that we are running on the rest of the catalyst 99k family is extending here in fact the binary file that we run on the rest of the Carnegie fam runs here as well so we just need one file yeah run it across your network there including the core a lot of confusion eliminated right there yep okay now this this supervisor is also based on an x86 based CPU and you know the benefits of x86 based CPU which enables us to run application hosting different applications that you can run on the cat 9k now you can run it on the catalyst 9600 X ability there okay from high availability perspective we are bringing iss-you on this box which is not the case on the cat 6k yeah right which is still used to take some time so you need to have some downtime if you want to upgrade the box okay but core of the campus and core of the network is so important you can't do the knee downtime they can you craz whatsoever so you got the in server software upgrade now for this platform and leave you rolled that out with a 9500 as well right with the 9500 across the two units exact words words you'll hear within the Chelsea nice crawls the two supervisors okay right okay okay and and and that means minimal downtime in fact we have minimized the downtime to less than five milliseconds right okay yeah that's never heard of right we also have features like gir where you can take one of these schedule s 96 hundreds out of the network gracefully so you can do any maintenance if required and then put it back trace fully ok this is going to support a stack wise virtual ok which is a similar technology as VSS right this has hot patching available here as well ok I'd like the rest of the family which means for quick fixes for security vulnerabilities you can just apply that patch without any downtime it's a heart patch you just apply it the system keeps running and you get the update it reminds me of like a terminator movie you can't kill that cannot kill this thing that's you guys have thought of every different way in which they might happen ok absolutely let me also tell you a few things I want from security perspective ok this comes with built-in to 256 max ik oh it comes with all those great features we have on trustworthy systems okay we have it here which means the hardware is resilient this software cannot be tampered and we have all kinds of security inbuilt in the hardware and the software nice okay now this box is coming after we have introduced the intent-based networking right this is from day one doing intent-based networking okay so it participates in that type of architecture as well for a software to find access absolutely okay this can be used as the software-defined access border node on the control plane node right but more importantly this box can be used for any type of deployments right which means whether you have a traditional deployment right with l2 l3 l2 l3 boundary whether you have an MPLS core whether you are going and modernizing your network with software-defined access and fabric based solutions you are covered the catalyst 9600 supports all kinds of deployment it can go in any type of campus core that's a good point not to overlook because I think in certain situations with non Cisco manufacturers you may actually have to buy a completely separate box each time you're trying to do some different type of architectural layout you're saying does not matter so in case you start with one but sure say you're changing your architecture or if you're looking for consistency in multiple locations you want one box you can deal with standardize on one box you can use it in multiple different deployments very nice ok right and and going forward we are going to have more features in a space for example we talked about one gig 10 gig 25 gig and 50 gig yeah oh you do okay so 50 gig is going to come up on the same line card that we have here ok the 10 gig line card that will be supported because the same form factor we have simplified it yeah it doesn't it doesn't depend on this switch right it depends on what kind of optics and fiber you have well now you have our fiber optics in this particular layout do we also support copper for the customers that question right there are some customers who are still running copper or who wants to have cooperated to the core device we are going to have an EM gig line card 48 port I saw theirs in base T support for doing multi line rate which are absolutely okay you can run it at 12.5 5 & 10 gig nice okay for the 8 board line rate yeah beautiful okay so this thing is prepared for a lot of different situations its prepared for high availability prepared for security anything else that we need to focus on here I'm in love already but what else you got there are a lot of things I think you can go and look at the website but remember when business is depending on the core right you really need a catalyst 9600 as the core device in your network well I love the way the last couple of years you and I've been working together you have taken the 9000 series and we've consistently added in working out from the edge in some situations we had just done the 9200 it seems like months ago with just in 2018 and then of course now we've got the arrow net line coming in with a 9800 and doing the wireless LAN controller 9000 is the place to be and the nice thing is the consistency all the way across the board wired or Wireless you guys have got it going on thank you to your team for doing this thank you for being willing to bring this in and leave it with us here in the studio because I think this is gonna help things run a lot smoother appreciate that we'll talk more about that later guys I hope you enjoyed this tons of details will of course have the workshop going into even more detail here shortly so be sure and look for that if you don't catch it live but also check out our other shows a lot of stuff coming out with launches recently within Cisco including new access points we talked about those changing edges and we talked about the core of the network being able to support everything that's happening right now as things go out of cannot out of control but continue to grow so join us more shows coming on this kind of stuff thank you so much for joining us today we'll see on the next one [Music]

Channel: Cisco

Views: 16,921

Rating: 4.8504672 out of 5

Keywords: Cisco, TechWiseTV, Catalyst, Cisco DNA, Switching, 9600, 6500

Id: Cya-JRpQ4ss

Length: 21min 57sec (1317 seconds)

Published: Tue May 14 2019