Cisco Reveals ACI Pricing

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A breakdown of Cisco ACI pricing-It contains software licensing, hardware costs, and bundles for starters and Catalyst 6500 upgrades.

This week, Cisco released list pricing for several components of its Application Centric Infrastructure fabric, including several Nexus 9000 series switches and ACI software licenses for leaf switches. The key piece of Cisco’s ACI strategy will ship July 31, along with new ACI starter kits.

Note: The Cisco ACI fabric consists of three major components:

  • Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC)
  • Spine switches
  • Leaf switches

Cisco is pricing ACI software as a single perpetual license per leaf to “keep it simple and predictable,” says Director of Product Management Thomas Scheibe.

“We don’t want to go down the path of per VM or monthly licensing,” he said, in a poke at rival VMware’s NSX network virtualization platform.

Here is the pricing breakdown of the ACI components and the product IDs for ordering. The Nexus 9000 X9400 line cards are all based on Broadcom Trident 2 silicon; the X9500 line card features a mix of Broadcom Trident 2 and Cisco ACI-capable custom ASICs which are software upgradeable to support the ACI fabric:

Product ID Product Description List Price
ACI Spine -Modular    
N9K-C9508-B2 Nexus 9508 Common Equipment Bundle 2 $100,000
N9K-X9736PQ ACI Spine Line Card : 36p QSFP 40G $30,000
ACI Spine – Fixed    
N9K-C9336PQ ACI Spine Switch: 36p QSFP $36,000
ACI Leafs    
N9K-C9396PX Nexus 9396PX switch, 48p 10G SFP+ & 12p 40G QSFP+ $32,000
N9K-C93128TX Nexus 93128TX switch, 96p 1/10G-T & 8p 40G QSFP+ $30,000
ACI Leaf Licenses    
ACI-N9K-48X= ACI SW license for 48p 10G LEAF PORTS $13,000
ACI-N9K-96X= ACI SW license for 96p 10G LEAF PORTS $15,000
ACI-F48G ACI SW license for N2000: 48 1G ports $3,000
ACI-F32X ACI SW license for N2000: 32 10G ports $7,000
ACI-F48X ACI SW license for N2000: 48 10G ports $9,000
APIC Appliance    
APIC-CLUSTER-M1 APIC controller cluster for up to 1,000 edge ports (Base Price) $40,293
APIC-CLUSTER-L1 APIC controller cluster for more than 1,000 edge ports (Base Price) $58,017
ACI Starter Kits    
ACI-C9336-B1-192PX 2 N9336PQ, 4 N9396PX + 4 ACI SW lic, 1 APIC-CLUSTER-M1, 8 40G active optical cabling (AOC) $250,000
ACI-C9336-B2-384TX 2 N9336PQ, 4 N93128TX + 4 ACI SW lic, 1 APIC-CLUSTER-M1, 8 40G AOC $275,000
ACI-C9508-B1-96PX 2 N9508 & 2X9736PQ, 2 N9396PX + 2 ACI SW lic, 1 APIC-CLUSTER-M1, 8 40G AOC $325,000
ACI-C9508-B2-192TX 2 N9508 & 2X9736PQ, 2 N93128TX + 2 ACI SW lic, 1 APIC-CLUSTER-M1, 8 40G AOC $350,000

 

Product ID Product Description List Price
Nexus 9500 Common Equipment Bundles  
N9K-C9504-B3 Nexus 9504 Common Equipment Bundle 3 incl. 4 Fabric Modules (FM) $55,000
N9K-C9508-B3 Nexus 9508 Common Equipment Bundle 3 incl. 4 FM $80,000
N9K-C9516-B3 Nexus 9516 Common Equipment Bundle 3 incl. 4 FM $125,000
Nexus 9500 Linecards  
N9K-X9464TX 48p 1/10GT and 4p 40G QSFP+ (4FM required) $15,000
N9K-X9464PX 48p 1/10G SFP+ and 4p 40G QSFP+ (4FM required) $15,000
N9K-X9432PQ 32p 40G QSFP+ (4 FM required) $20,000
N9K-X9536PQ 36p 40G QSFP+, 1.5:1 oversubscribed, ACI Leaf ready (3FM required) $40,000

Cisco is also offering four starter kit bundles to upgrade legacy Catalyst 6500 and 6500-E series switches in end-of-row data center deployments to the Nexus 9508 with the X9464TX or X9564TX line cards. The Catalyst 6500-E has reached End of Sale status in data centers; it is still offered in the campus environment, however.

Certain models and associated components of the Catalyst 6500 “classic” reached EoS over the course of several years.

Cisco says customers can upgrade their installed Catalyst 6500/6500-E switch base to 10G performance at a price comparable to their initial 1G investments. The upgrade requires no change to cabling and without any server downtime, if servers are dual homed, Cisco says.

Product ID Product Description List Price 
Nexus 9500 End-of-Row Bundles  
N9K-C9508-B38Q 1 N9508-B3, 4 X9464TX LC, 8 QSFP BiDi $120,000
N9K-C9508-B3R8Q 1 N9508-B3, 4 X9464TX LC, 8 QSFP BiDi, Red Sup $135,000
N9K-C9508-B28Q 1 N9508-B2, 4 X9564TX LC, 8 QSFP BiDi, ACI Ready Leaf $150,000
N9K-C9508-B2R8Q 1 N9508-B2, 4 X9564TX LC, 8 QSFP BiDi, Red Sup, ACI Ready Leaf $165,000

Reference Reviews from https://www.networkworld.com/article/2459441/cisco-subnet/a-breakdown-of-cisco-aci-pricing.html

 

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