specification: API Commons Rate Limits
specificationVersion: '0.1'
schema: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/interface-research/main/schema/api-commons.yml#/$defs/RateLimits
provider: Cisco Nexus Dashboard
providerId: cisco-nexus
created: '2026-05-04'
# Provenance stamped 2026-08-11: this artifact was written by the API Evangelist
# bulk sweep dated 2026-05-04, not harvested from the provider. See roadmap#35.
method: generated
modified: '2026-05-05'
reconciled: false
tags:
  - Data Center
  - Networking
  - Rate Limiting
description: Cisco Nexus Dashboard, NX-API, and the underlying NX-OS / ACI APIs are deployed by the
  customer on premises or in their VPC. Public per-second rate limits are not published; throughput is
  bounded by switch CPU / supervisor capacity and by NX-API session limits configured in NX-OS.
  Streaming telemetry (gRPC/gNMI/Model-Driven Telemetry) is the recommended path for high-volume
  observability rather than polling REST endpoints.
notes: Replace with concrete per-platform NX-API session limits when verified against Cisco's
  configuration guides for the customer's deployed Nexus platform.
sources:
  - https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus9000/sw/93x/programmability/guide/b-cisco-nexus-9000-series-nx-os-programmability-guide-93x.html
  - https://developer.cisco.com/docs/nexus-dashboard/
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
  serviceUnavailable: 503
limits:
  - name: NX-API REST sessions
    scope: switch
    metric: concurrent_sessions
    limit: see NX-OS Programmability Guide; bounded by supervisor CPU
  - name: gRPC / Model-Driven Telemetry subscriptions
    scope: switch
    metric: concurrent_subscriptions
    limit: see NX-OS Programmability Guide; varies by platform (e.g. N9K-C93180YC-FX vs N9K-C9508)
  - name: Nexus Dashboard cluster API
    scope: cluster
    metric: varies
    limit: see Nexus Dashboard scale guide for the deployed cluster size
policies:
  - name: Capacity-bounded
    description: Limits are bounded by supervisor / control-plane CPU on each switch and by the Nexus
      Dashboard cluster's compute footprint, not by a cloud-style per-second quota.
  - name: Prefer streaming telemetry
    description: For monitoring at scale, use gRPC/gNMI Model-Driven Telemetry instead of polling
      NX-API REST endpoints to avoid control-plane saturation.
  - name: Backoff Strategy
    description: Clients should implement exponential backoff with jitter on HTTP 429/503 responses
      and limit concurrent NX-API sessions per switch.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com