Brocade RX Series - Manual

HigHligHts

•

System redundancy (switch, management and

power) across all BigIron RX chassis

•

Interchangeable half-height line modules

reduce sparing costs and provide cost-effective

modular growth

•

Compact chassis design supports very high-

density single rack configurations—up to 192

wire-speed 10-Gigabit Ethernet and 2,304

wire-speed Gigabit Ethernet in standard

7-foot Telco rack

•

Scalable hardware-based IP routing to

512,000 IPv4 routes per line module

•

Powerful suite of unicast and multicast IPv4

and IPv6 protocol support

•

Advanced virtual output queue (VoQ) design

eliminates head of line blocking and provides

scalable QoS

•

End to End QoS supported with hardware

based honoring and marking and congestion

management

•

High-capacity 80 Gbps cross-module

link aggregation supports high-bandwidth

inter-switch trunking

•

High-availability design features redundant

and hot-pluggable hardware, hitless Layer 2

software upgrades and graceful BGP and

OSPF restart

•

Advanced non-blocking Clos fabric features

adaptive self-routing with graceful system

degradation in the event of two or more

module failures

•

Embedded sFlow per port supports scalable

hardware-based traffic monitoring across all

switch ports without impacting performance

Modular Layer 2/3

Ethernet Switches

The role of data networks in our daily lives

continues to expand and grow. Emerging

needs such as application convergence,
non-stop operation, scalability and IPv6-
readiness place new demands on the
network. Modern network solutions must
be assessed across a wider set of attributes
than earlier generation equipment. In
particular, the network must be evaluated on
merits that include performance, reliability,
scalability, quality of service, security and
total cost of ownership (TCO).

The Brocade

®

BigIron

®

RX Series of Layer 2/3

Ethernet switches excels in all of these

areas, enabling network designers to deploy

an Ethernet infrastructure that addresses

today’s requirements with a scalable
architecture designed to support network
growth and evolution. The BigIron RX Series
incorporates the latest advances in switch
architecture, system resilience, quality of
service and switch security in a family of
modular chassis setting leading industry
benchmarks for price-performance,
scalability and TCO.

Available in four chassis models, the
BigIron RX Series allows network designers
to standardize on a single product family
for aggregation and backbone switching.
In addition to its enterprise role, the BigIron
RX Series, with its high-density and compact
design, is an ideal IP solution for high-
performance computing environments and

Internet Exchanges and Internet Service

BRocadE

BIGIRoN

RX SERIES

HIGH-

PERFORMANCE

ETHERNET

SWITCHING

data SHEEt

Providers (IXPs and ISPs) where non-

blocking, high-density Ethernet switches

are needed.

All four BigIron RX systems are designed

for non-stop operation, supporting 1:1
management module redundancy, N+1
switch module redundancy, M+N power
module redundancy and N+1 fan redundancy.

Additionally, the BigIron RX Series supports

hitless Layer 2 software upgrades and graceful

restart routing for fast convergence in the
event of a management module failure.

At the heart of the BigIron RX architecture
is an adaptive self-routing Clos switch fabric
with a virtual output queue (VOQ) design.
This non-blocking architecture is optimized
for maximum throughput and low latency for