Arista Intros High Density Auto-Negotiating 10GBASE-T Switches

Arista Networks has announced the introduction of high density 10GBASE-T switches in a 1U form factor. The Arista 7100T layer 2/3 switches include 24 and 48-port models. The models include auto-negotiating 1/10GBASE-T ports with standard RJ-45 connectors and SFP+ uplink ports.

 

Arista provides cloud networking solutions for large datacenter and computing environments. The Arista switches will be displayed at Interop (News - Alert) in Las Vegas next week, said the company.

 

The Arista 7100T switches are virtualization enablers and can accommodate network service integration with Arista Extensible Operating System (EOS). These are used for data center server access and they provide backward compatibility with standard Gigabit Ethernet cabling besides protecting investments for customers migrating from Gigabit to 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

 

“As customers consolidate servers across their datacenter, the demand for networking bandwidth grows tremendously,” said Andy Bechtolsheim, chief development officer at Arista. “The new high-density 7100 Series 10GBASE-T switches are ideal for server connections since they enable a seamless transition from 1 to 10 Gigabit Ethernet without requiring new cabling.”

 

The 7100T switches support 10GBASE- T over Category 6a cabling up to 100m besides offering support to Category 5e and Category 6 cabling with distances up to 55m. The Arista 7100T switches and 10GBASE-T adapters from companies like Intel (News - Alert) can enable high-speed server connectivity with standardized options in data centers of all sizes.

 

Tom Swinford, vice President and general manager of Intel’s LAN Access Division, said that Arista 7100T switches and the Intel 10 Gigabit AT Server Adapter offer customers an affordable, high performing 10 Gigabit solution for virtualized datacenters.

 

He also said that Intel Ethernet adapters are optimized for both VMware and Windows 7 Hyper-V so as to meet the bandwidth and performance needs of virtualized servers. 10GBASE-T will help accelerate the volume deployment of 10GbE in volume rack and tower servers. 

 

The Arista switches provide customers with access to Linux tools, extensible network services and also allow integration with 3rd party applications by employing Arista EOS. This is a multi-process state sharing architecture which separates networking and processing. Arista EOS becomes a robust operating system suitable for data centers when it includes self healing (Stateful Fault Repair) and In-Service Software Upgrades (ISSU) features.