Arista Networks 7500

Arista Networks 7500 Best of Interop 2010 "Datacenters are clearly transforming into systems that will require much more connectivity with most of it being at 10 GigE." Observes Dr. Vladimir Kozlov Chief Analyst, LightCounting at Interop 2010.

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Analyst Relations Contact:
Vladimir G. Kozlov
LightCounting
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vladimir.kozlov@lightcounting.com

LightCounting News: April 2010

There is a clear opportunity for optical interfaces to capture the bulk 10GigE ports deployed in the next 10 years.

By Dr. Vladimir G. Kozlov, Founder, Chief Analyst, LightCounting, LLC

Arista Networks 7500 named as the 2010 Best of Interop Grand Prize Winner!

10GigE Surge
LightCounting analysts covered the Interop 2010 trade show in Las Vegas on April 24-29, 2010. Most noteworthy was the palpable surge in popularity of 10Gbps Ethernet products for line cards, switch/router systems and servers. The buzz on the show floor was, "Customers stopped asking about 10G and started ordering it now, and every other card shipped has at least one 10GigE port on it". An identified change from last year was the significant shift from systems showing vast arrays of 1Gbps RJ-45 Ethernet ports to vast arrays of SFP+ ports (not 10GBase-T) as exhibited by nearly every system and line card-supplier. Switch chassis with 300-700 ports of SFP+ were on display capable of supporting Direct Attach copper and optical transceivers.

Many switch suppliers showed QSFP sockets for uplinks including a few showing 40-Gbps active optical cables. CXP interconnects were noticeably absent as the industry seems to be centering on QSFP format for cost reasons. Many line card suppliers stated that their SFP+ sockets were mostly being filled with optical transceivers or Direct Attach copper interfaces, which are used for very short reach.

Optical Interface Opportunities
There is a clear opportunity for optical interfaces to capture the bulk 10GigE ports deployed in the next 10 years. The biggest barrier is the market perception that optics is an expensive solution suitable only for early adopters. The glaring message delivered by the copper-centric Ethernet crowd to SFP+ suppliers was "thank you for your help, we will take it from here" but there are a lot of factors playing in favor of SFP+. In interviews conducted by LightCounting, system and switch installers mentioned that Cat-6a copper cables [required to support 10GBASE-T] were not easy to install nor field terminate, whereas optical and Direct Attach cabling was preferred based on cost, size, airflow and other reasons. Observers noted that the cost of Cisco's card equipped with optical SFP+ ports is still relatively high, but all other vendors including HP price it more reasonably.

The Best Of Interop
While the battle of Cisco and HP is unfolding across the switch and server markets, smaller and more nimble vendors are making headlines. Arista Networks impressively claimed the 2010 Best of Interop Grand Prize Winner for their progress and ingenuity with the 7500 gateway switch system and won infrastructure category show award for low latency, low power, compact 10G 7500 modular switch that supports both 10GBase-T and SFP+ with QSFP for uplinks. The 384-port switch demo at Interop was populated with optical interfaces only, as the pure weight and size of Cat6 cabling required is prohibitive. We will be discussing further the importance of this direction in our upcoming state of the industry report.

Mellanox Technologies was also awarded the Best of Interop 2010 winner in the data center server and storage category for their adapter card BridgeX BX5020, that supports a mix of Infiniband, Ethernet, FCoE and Fibre Channel, allowing fabric convergence for computing, networking and storage traffic, which may prove to be a prudent move. After all, Interop is all about the end users who have to keep the network running smoothly, no matter which technology comes in and out of favor.