The Cisco Nexus 9000 Series offers two modes of operation. Organizations can use Cisco^® NX-OS Software with the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series in standard Cisco Nexus switch environments (NX-OS mode). They can also use ACI mode, with hardware infrastructure ready to support the Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI^™) solution, to take full advantage of an automated, policy-based, systems management approach using Cisco ACI. This data sheet covers standard Cisco Nexus 9500 platform deployment scenarios using NX-OS mode.