12 | SwitchBlade® x8100 Series CORE CHASSIS SWITCHES SwitchBlade x8100 Series core chassis switches are primarily engineered for medium to large enterprise networks — but are equally at home in the enterprise data center. They are designed to deliver high availability, maximum performance, future scalability, and high port count in compact, eco-friendly packages. Advanced Operating System The SwitchBlade x8100 Series features the AlliedWare Plus operating system, providing users with advanced Layer 3 functionality and an industry-standard Command Line Interface (CLI). High Availability Architecture The SwitchBlade x8100 Series is designed to deliver high availability for mission-critical applications found in data centers, hospitality, government, and financial institutions. Dual redundant control/fabric modules inter-connecting through redundant paths to all the line cards ensure continuous operation even in the event of a fabric failure or a firmware upgrade. Dual redundant power supplies ensure maximum system up-time, while two PoE power supplies ensure continuous power to the end-points. Small Physical Size The SwitchBlade x8112 packs up to 400 Gigabit, 120 x 10G or 2 x 40G Ethernet ports into a single, compact 7RU-high chassis. The 6-slot SwitchBlade x8106 chassis is the ultimate choice in compact flexibility. It is designed to provide high-density Gigabit, 10 Gigabit or 40 Gigabit connectivity in 4RU and has the same high availability architecture as the SwitchBlade x8112. Scalable Architecture The SwitchBlade x8100 Series guarantees performance for medium and large network core solutions. With CFC960 control cards, two chassis can be stacked together into a single virtual unit using VCStack Plus.™ This creates a powerful and completely resilient network core, which can even be distributed over long distance. In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU) In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU) increases network uptime by enabling a customer to upgrade the software running on their chassis without disrupting network traffic. This means that upgrades and maintenance tasks can be completed without having to schedule an outage. ISSU can be used on any SwitchBlade x8100 system with two CFC960 controller cards installed, and is compatible with VCStack Plus so that software upgrades can be performed hitlessly across two chassis to further reduce downtime. EPSRing Putting a ring of Ethernet switches at the core of a network is a simple way to increase the network’s resilience. Such a network is no longer susceptible to a single point of failure. Traditionally, spanning tree-based technologies are used to protect rings, but they are relatively slow to recover from link failure. This can create problems for applications that have strict loss requirements, such as voice and video traffic, where the speed of recovery is highly significant. Allied Telesis Ethernet Protection Switched Ring (EPSRing) provides high-speed (~50ms) reconfigurations in the event of a failure, ensuring no noticeable loss of service.