Arista Networks just introduced 7050X3 and 7260X3 platforms, which function on lower power, yet deliver a tenfold increase in performance of switching and routing. Both new platforms have double the capacity of the previous iterations, 7050X and 72600, developed only seven years earlier. In addition, they add new capabilities for visibility, load balancing, network segmentation and scale. The physical specifications in the new dual leaf-spine systems will remain the same, however, to prevent the need for changes to existing cable infrastructure. The new generation of 25G and 100G systems enable Cloud and Enterprise customers to effortlessly migrate their networks, maintaining operational consistency.
The Arista 7050X3 and 7260X3 Series are fixed-form factor leaf and spine platforms based on the Broadcom Trident 3 and Tomahawk 2 chip sets, both running Arista EOS® for automation and visibility, and enabling versatile two-tier cloud networks.
“We are seeing customer adoption of on-premises cloud-scale applications with high bandwidth, driven by virtualized and containerized servers, driving a migration to 25/100G in Enterprise networks to address the increasing bandwidth. These new systems require improvements in network telemetry and performance monitoring tools, aligned to an expectation of an ‘always-on’ operation,” said Alan Weckel, Founder and Technology Analyst for 650 Group.
The 7050X3 and 7260X3 platforms run the single EOS software image and leverage CloudVision®, offering customers a set of comprehensive features, open extensibility and consistency of operations. The qualification time is dramatically reduced, helping customers to easily insert into existing networks. Furthermore, the 7050X3 and 7260X3 offer advances in dynamic load balancing, high availability with hitless operations and VXLAN with feature parity to Arista’s existing 7050X Series for modern datacenters.
Improved features include:
- Intelligent buffering and congestion-aware automated network load balancing features, which tackle traffic growth from highly distributed applications;
- In-band path and latency monitoring with advanced packet tracing provides visibility into hot-spots, combined with Latency AnalyZer (LANZ) for traffic and capture monitoring;
- New network segmentation protocols including fully featured VXLAN with support for complex tunnel encapsulation and Segment Routing;
- Hitless software upgrades, speed modifications and flexible L2 and L3 scale streamlines operations and hastens deployment of new services without downtime;
- The 7050X3 enables high performance network address translation (NAT) without an impact to performance or latency, helping meet the challenge of limited IP addresses in multi-tenant or shared environments.
Both the series are now available, with additional members to be released over time. 7260CX3 system can support “up to 64 ports of 100G”. 7050X3 Series has two variants, specifically, the 7050CX3-32S that supports 32 ports of 100G and 7050SX3-48YC12 that delivers high density 25G server and 100G uplinks. Pricing starts at “under $800/100G port” for the 64 x 100G system.