Arista Networks today announced two new 100G Ethernet modules for its spine/core switch that provide more connectivity options for users.
The new modules support six and 12 ports of 100G Ethernet over CFP2 or QSFP-100 optics. They join Arista's existing 12-port MXP line cards, which support a mix of 10/40/100G Ethernet.
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The CFP2 supports distances of up to 40km over single mode fiber, Arista says. The card can also support multimode fiber.
The QSFP-100 card can support distances of 1k m to 10km. It allows users to mix 100G ports with 40G ports, Arista says. The MXP card supports distances up to 400m.
Arista also enhanced its EOS operating system software for these high-density 100G environments. The extensions include support for the VXLAN network virtualization specification for multitenant cloud environments, and monitoring capabilities for 100G networks.
Within a data center, VXLAN allows a network to scale beyond 4,096 VLANs. It reduces the size of a failure domain, eliminates blocked links, and integrates with VMware's NSX network virtualization system, Arista says. Between data centers, it can serve as a data center interconnect.
It also enables data center-to-cloud connectivity and multitenancy scale to 16 million virtual network identifiers, Arista says.
Arista's DANZ data analysis application in EOS can now gain traffic visibility into 100G networks by working with the tap aggregation capabilities of the 7500E switches, Arista says. DANZ can deliver tap aggregated 10G connections into a single 100Gigabit Ethernet uplink to network monitoring, management and analytic tools, Arista says.
EOS also now allows users to perform maintenance on any infrastructure element without impacting application traffic flow, the company says.
The six-port 100G card for the 7500E starts at $6,600 per 100G port, without optics. It will be orderable in the second quarter.
The 12-port QSFP-100 module is planned for second half availability. Its price per 100G port is $5,400, excluding optics.
Jim Duffy has been covering technology for over 27 years, 22 at Network World. He also writes The Cisco Connection blog and can be reached on Twitter @Jim_Duffy.
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