The Cisco Nexus 93180YC-FX is a leaf switch Cisco stopped selling on 31 July 2024 and supports until 31 July 2029, under end-of-life notice EOL15110. It carries 48 downlink ports at 1, 10 or 25 Gbps and six uplinks at 40 or 100 Gbps, rated by Cisco at 3.6 Tbps and 1.2 billion packets per second. That five-year gap between the two dates is the refurbished case.
Ports, interfaces and what this switch presents
The port face is two tiers. Forty-eight SFP28 downlink ports run at 1, 10 or 25 Gbps, so a single switch can serve a rack that still has 1 Gigabit management hardware in it alongside servers on 25 Gigabit adapters, without splitting the rack across two access devices. Six QSFP28 uplink ports run at 40 or 100 Gbps and face the spine. Cisco publishes both tiers as multi-rate, which is the property that matters when a rack is refreshed in stages rather than all at once: the optic decides the speed, and the port does not have to be retired to change it.
| Downlink ports | 48 x 1/10/25-Gbps SFP28 |
|---|---|
| Uplink ports | 6 x 40/100-Gbps QSFP28 |
| Switching capacity | 3.6 Tbps |
| Forwarding rate | 1.2 billion packets per second |
| Form-Factor | 1RU |
| MACsec | Supported on all ports with speed greater than or equal to 10 Gbps |
| MACsec licensing | Enabling MACsec requires a feature license |
| Last day to order | 31 July 2024 |
| Last day of support | 31 July 2029 |
| Cisco notice | EOL15110 |
Every figure in that table is Cisco's own, taken from the platform data sheet and from notice EOL15110. Airflow and power are ordered separately and are platform-specific: Cisco lists the NXA-PAC-500W-PI and NXA-PAC-500W-PE alternating-current supplies, the NXA-PDC-930W-PI and NXA-PDC-930W-PE direct-current supplies, and the N9K-PUV-1200W dual-direction supply, with the NXA-FAN-30CFM-F fan for port-side exhaust and the NXA-FAN-30CFM-B fan for port-side intake. Tell us which airflow direction your rack needs and we will confirm what the specific unit carries before it ships.
Switching capacity and forwarding rate
Cisco rates the Nexus 93180YC-FX at 3.6 Tbps of switching capacity and 1.2 billion packets per second of forwarding. Those two numbers describe different limits and a buyer sizing a leaf should read them as a pair: the first is the aggregate the fabric of the switch can carry, and the second is how many discrete packets it can make a forwarding decision on in a second. A rack full of storage traffic in large frames pushes the first figure; a rack full of small transactional packets pushes the second, and it is the second that decides whether a leaf holds up under a microservice workload.
The port arithmetic sits inside the capacity figure rather than against it. Forty-eight downlinks at 25 Gbps and six uplinks at 100 Gbps is a design that assumes the rack does not send every port to the spine at line rate at the same moment, which is the normal condition in a leaf-and-spine access layer.
MACsec on this platform, and the two qualifiers that travel with it
Cisco states that the Nexus 93180YC-FX supports MACsec on all ports with a speed greater than or equal to 10 Gbps. That is a real qualifier and it repays a careful reading on a switch whose downlinks run at 1, 10 or 25 Gbps: a port configured at 1 Gigabit sits outside the statement. Cisco adds a second qualifier in its own footnote, which is that enabling MACsec requires a feature license. Both qualifiers belong to this platform and neither should be carried across to another one. Competitors list MACsec as a bare yes on this switch. It is a yes with a speed condition and a licensing condition, and if link-layer encryption is the reason you are buying the switch, those two conditions are the purchase.
Support horizon: the two dates Cisco published
Cisco's last day to order the Nexus 93180YC-FX was 31 July 2024, and Cisco's last day of support for it is 31 July 2029, under end-of-life notice EOL15110.
Read on its own, the first date sounds like bad news and the second is meaningless without it. Together they are the entire argument for buying this switch refurbished. Cisco will not sell you a new one, so the new-hardware option is closed regardless of budget; and Cisco continues to support the platform for years after the order book shut, so the switch you buy is not a dead end. That gap is what a refurbished unit is actually selling. It is also why the notice number belongs on this page: EOL15110 is the document a procurement team will be asked to produce, and it names the same two dates we do.
Where the 93180YC-FX sits in the Nexus 9300 line
The nearest comparison is the previous generation of the same port face, the Cisco Nexus 93180YC-EX, which we also list. Both are 48-port SFP28 leaf switches with six uplinks, and both are rated by Cisco at 3.6 Tbps.
| Nexus 93180YC-FX | Nexus 93180YC-EX | |
|---|---|---|
| Switching capacity | 3.6 Tbps | 3.6 Tbps |
| Forwarding rate | 1.2 billion packets per second | 2.6 billion packets per second |
| Last day to order | 31 July 2024 | 9 August 2022 |
| Last day of support | 31 July 2029 | 31 August 2027 |
| Cisco notice | EOL15110 | EOL14472 |
The row that surprises people is the forwarding rate: Cisco publishes 2.6 billion packets per second for the earlier 93180YC-EX and 1.2 billion for this switch, at the same 3.6 Tbps of capacity. This table is not an upgrade path and should not be read as one. What separates these two generations on Cisco's own published figures is the support horizon, not the headline throughput: 31 August 2027 against 31 July 2029, a difference of nearly two years of vendor support on hardware that presents an identical port face to the rack.
The platform after this one is the Cisco Nexus 93180YC-FX3, which Cisco still ships and which publishes the same 3.6 Tbps and the same 1.2 billion packets per second as this switch. If your reason for buying is platform currency rather than throughput, that is the page to read. If your reason is a supported switch at a refurbished price with a published horizon attached to it, this one is the answer.
Buying refurbished after Cisco stopped selling it
This is the same part number and the same hardware Cisco shipped. Every unit goes through our process in the same order: inbound test on receipt, disassembly, cleaning, inventory, pick, assembly, configuration, and an outbound test before it ships. Whole systems, which includes this switch, carry a 2-year Enterasource warranty, and delivery is free FedEx Ground to the lower 48 states. We do not claim that any Cisco warranty transfers to a second-hand unit, because it does not.
The commercial logic on a post-order-book platform is simple enough to state in a sentence. The alternative to a refurbished 93180YC-FX is not a new 93180YC-FX, because Cisco does not sell one. It is a different platform, on a different price basis, usually with a different port face, and often with a fabric refresh attached to it. A refurbished unit lets a rack keep the design it already has for as long as the vendor supports it.
Licenses, subscriptions and what ships with the unit
Software licenses and subscriptions are not included unless the listing states otherwise, and an entitlement bought by the original owner belongs to that owner's account rather than to the chassis. On this switch the concrete case is MACsec: Cisco's own footnote states that enabling it requires a feature license, so the hardware capability and the right to turn it on are two separate questions and the second one does not arrive in the box. Tell us which features your deployment depends on before you order and we will confirm, in writing, exactly what the specific unit we are shipping carries and what you will need to license separately.
Condition, testing and what is in the box
The switch ships tested and configured to the state you ask for. Rails, optics, power supplies and fan modules are separate line items unless the listing says they are included, and on this platform the airflow direction of the fan and the power supply have to match, which is why we confirm the pair rather than assuming it. We list what we have, we test what we ship, and if the unit we source differs in any respect from the one quoted we tell you before it leaves, not after.
For the wider family, including the generations either side of this one, see Cisco Nexus 9000, or the full range at Cisco networking.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens after Cisco's last day of support for the Nexus 93180YC-FX?
Cisco's last day of support is 31 July 2029 under notice EOL15110. After that date Cisco no longer provides support for the platform, so the switch continues to run but stops being a vendor-supported device. Most buyers plan the replacement against that date rather than against the order-book date, because the order-book date has already passed and the support date is the one that still constrains a design. Buying now buys the remainder of that window.
What does notice EOL15110 actually cover?
EOL15110 is the Cisco end-of-life notice for this switch, and it is the document that publishes both milestones we quote on this page: the last day to order, 31 July 2024, and the last day of support, 31 July 2029. When a procurement team asks for evidence of a platform's remaining vendor horizon, that notice number is what they are asking for. We quote the notice rather than paraphrasing it so the figures can be checked against Cisco directly.
How is the 93180YC-FX different from the 93180YC-EX?
They present the same port face: 48 SFP28 downlinks and six QSFP28 uplinks, both rated by Cisco at 3.6 Tbps. The differences that decide between them are the published forwarding rate, where Cisco states 2.6 billion packets per second for the EX and 1.2 billion for this switch, and the vendor horizon, where the EX runs to 31 August 2027 under notice EOL14472 and this switch runs to 31 July 2029. It is a support-horizon decision far more than a performance one.
Do the 48 downlink ports have to run at the same speed?
No. Cisco publishes the downlinks as 1, 10 or 25 Gigabit SFP28 ports, and the speed is set by the optic and the configuration on a per-port basis. That is the property that makes this switch useful in a rack being refreshed in stages, because older 1 Gigabit management hardware and newer 25 Gigabit server adapters can terminate on the same access switch instead of forcing a second device into the rack.
What condition are your refurbished Nexus switches in and how are they tested?
Every unit is tested on receipt, then disassembled, cleaned, inventoried, picked, assembled, configured and tested again before it ships. The part number and the hardware are the same as Cisco shipped. Whole systems ship with an Enterasource warranty, stated in full on the listing, and go out on free FedEx Ground to the lower 48 states. We do not invent a burn-in duration or a certification name, and we do not claim that any Cisco warranty follows the hardware to a second owner.
How does the lead time work when the switch is priced by quote?
Send us the configuration you need, including the airflow direction, the power supply type and any optics, and we will come back with availability and a price for that exact build. Because we source these units rather than holding every variant on a shelf, the honest answer on timing comes with the quote rather than before it. If what we can source differs from what you asked for, we tell you at quote time so you can decide before anything ships.
