Cisco UCS XE9305 — Blade Servers Designed for the Modern Edge

Cisco has expanded its blade server lineup with a new platform built specifically for edge environments, where space, power, and simplicity matter. Launched in November 2025, the Cisco UCS XE9305 Chassis and UCS XE130c M8 Compute Node form the backbone of the Cisco Unified Edge solution — a modular, AI-ready, cloud-managed system that brings compute, networking, storage, and security together in a compact blade form factor.

In this post, we’ll break down what this offering is all about and share the key technical details.

Cisco Unified Edge Hardware Components

Cisco UCS XE9305 Chassis

Cisco UCS XE9305 Chassis

 

  • 3 RU-high, 17-inch-wide, and 18-inch-deep chassis with five front-facing flexible slots for compute nodes and future modules that may include networking node for routing, switching, and secure access service edge (SASE) capabilities.
  • Five front-facing slots for hot-swappable sled-based compute and networking nodes
  • Two (2) hot-swappable Cisco Edge Chassis Management Controllers (CMCs) forming a unified fabric that provides connectivity between all nodes within the chassis and with upstream networks, and provides local chassis management and secure control plane connection with Cisco Intersight.  Each CMC contains:
    • An embedded 25 Gbps switch with 145 Gbps of switching bandwidth with five (5) rear-facing 25 Gbps switch ports connecting to nodes within the chassis through the chassis mid-plane and two (2) front-panel 10 Gbps SFP+ uplink ports for data traffic
    • One (1) front-panel 1 Gbps RJ-45 uplink port for management traffic
    • Two (2) front-panel USB-C ports for management console and external storage connectivity
  • Two (2) hot-swappable 2400 W Titanium AC power supply units (PSUs) providing N+N redundancy.
  • Five (5) 80 mm hot-swappable fan modules in the rear.
  • Accessories for flexible server mounting options: sliding rail kit for 4-post racks, static mount kit for 2-post racks, brackets for wall mounting, and brackets for shelf mounting (horizontally or vertically positioned

For more information: Cisco UCS XE9305 Chassis Data sheet | UCS XE9305 Spec Sheet

Cisco UCS XE130c M8 Compute Node

  • One Intel® Xeon® 6 SoC (System-on-Chip) processor; 12-/20-/32-core options.
  • Four memory channels and two DIMMs per channel, up to 768GB of total memory
  • Two 25G midplane connected NICs and two 1/10G front-panel network ports
  • One dedicated PCIe 5 GPU slot for a Half Height / Half Length 75W GPU
  • Internal M.2 SSDs: Up to two (2) M.2 SSDs protected by hardware RAID 1
  • Front-facing E3.S NVMe drives with 2 onfiguration options: “Storage-Optimized” which consists of up to 4 x E3.S NVMe drives and “IO-Optimized” which consists of up to 3 x E3.S NVMe drives.
  • One (1) HH/HL PCIe Gen5 slot supporting a range of peripherals, including PCIe NICs, DPUs, IPUs, etc. NOTE: this is optional and requires the “IO-Optimized” storage configuration.

For more information: Cisco UCS XE130c M8 Compute Node Data Sheet | UCX XE130c M8 Spec Sheet

Kevin Houston is the founder of BladesMadeSimple.com. With over 29 years of experience in the x86 server marketplace Kevin has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware virtualization. He has worked at Dell Technologies since August 2011 and is a Principal Technologist supporting the Southeast Enterprise Region and is also a CTO Ambassador for the Office of the CTO at Dell Technologies. #IWork4Dell

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