The NS9500 Sensor offers the solution of stacking multiple Sensors to achieve scalability. The individual Sensors in the stack are interconnected using external stacking cables. Stacking Sensors creates a unified data plane view across the stack. This allows the Manager to manage the stack as a unified device. In a stack, some of the Sensor properties like signature set and call back detector update etc. are managed at the stack level and remaining like port configuration, troubleshooting etc. are managed at the device level.
Even though the data plane is unified, some Sensor properties are managed at individual Sensor level from the Manager. Each Sensor in the stack has an independent connection to the Manager. The Manager interprets the stack as a collection of individual Sensors by creating a container entity called the stack.
Based on the requirement you can configure either 40 Gbps or 60 Gbps or 100 Gbps capacity for a stack. Separate licenses are required to achieve different capacity for the stack. Also, the number of Sensors required will vary based on the capacity. For more information, see Considerations for stacking NS9500 Sensors.