Arista Introduces Switches for Cloud Network “Spline”

Arista Networks introduced its 7300 and 7250 high-density switching platforms for cloud and enterprise data centers.

Arista also introduces its “Single Tier Spline” architecture for simplifying data centers by simplifying cabling, consolidating servers, migrating between virtual to physical networks and controling IP storage.  The idea is to collapse the leaf and spine together into a single-tier network for performance and latency sensitive cloud applications.  Arista said its design can bring true deterministic performance for up to 2000 hosts in one cluster while lowering operating and capital asset costs by 40%.

The Arista 7300 and 7250X series feature resilient control planes for the Spline Network deployment model.  Key characteristics include:

• Arista provides a single binary image of Arista EOS, purpose built for open cloud applications. Arista EOS’s unique foundation is a state-driven multiprocessing operating system.
• “Zero Touch Provisioning” to simplify network deployment,
• OpenWorkload to integrate with orchestration, virtualization, and provisioning tools in OpenStack, Microsoft System Center and VMware NSX;
• Wireless/wired integration with Aruba
• Partnerships with F5, Palo Alto Networks, Splunk and Riverbed.
• The Arista 7300 is comprised of three chassis: the Arista 7304, 7308 and 7316 with 4, 8 and 16 line card slots respectively. All three share a common resilient architecture that scales up to 512 ports of 40GbE or 2,048 ports of 10GbE, with wirespeed performance of 40Tbps (terabits per second) of throughput. X Series line card modules for the Arista 7300 include 10GBASE-T, SFP and QSFP configurations. Front-to-rear and rear-to-front airflow options along with platinum rated power supplies allow for improved efficiency and middle-of-row Spline configurations. Two Arista 7316 Series systems can fit in a single 42RU rack supporting over 4000 10GbE ports. With power consumption under 3W per 10GbE port and latency under 2 microseconds, a pair of 7300 series switches replaces two Catalyst 6509Es with more than ten times the scale, throughput, latency improvement and power efficiency. The 7300X series are available in Q1 2014 from $500 per 10GbE port.
  
• The Arista 7250X Series is a high density solution delivering 64 ports of wire-speed 40GbE or up to 256 Ports of 10GbE in a compact and power efficient two rack unit fixed form factor with redundant and hot-swap power supplies and fan modules. It offers a Layer 2 MAC table and Layer 3 routing tables that dynamically expand based on the application to support up to 288K MAC entries, or 144K routes.  It also supports Arista’s LRL4 QSFP optics that require a single pair of single mode fiber, reducing the fiber requirements by 75% compared to existing choices. The 7250QX-64 is available now and shipping for $1500 per 40GbE port. 

http://www.aristanetworks.com

Open Server Summit: Cloud Networking for Warehouse-sized Data Centers

Wednesday, October 23, 2013  Arista  No comments

The big six cloud companies are on CAPEX growth trajectories that will take them past the traditional telcos in a few years, said Andy Bechtolsheim, Chairman of Arista Networks.
There is a race to build gigantic data centers that are more efficient and powerful than anything seen before.  Speaking at the Open Server Summit in Santa Clara, California, Bechtolsheim said the expected gains from Moore’s Law coupled with promising developments in silicon photonics and virtualization technologies, make it likely that the hyper-scale data centers will continue to hold a competitive advantage over the coming decade.

So, how do you build a network for a data center with 100,000+ servers and millions of VMs?  Bechtolsheim said his company has already seen (and won) competitive bids for 100,000+ ports of non-blocking 10 GigE server connections.  The ideal network, he said, should be truly transparent, flat and universal. This means the bandwidth and latency between any two servers in the data center should be the same.  A top-of-rack switching architecture is preferred.  To scale it for the biggest of data centers, Arista has developed a “Spine-of-Spine” network architecture that could scale to link up to 884,000 servers at 10G with a 3-1 oversubscription.

http://www.openserversummit.com/
http://www.aristanetworks.com/