Chapter 1 Introduction; Overview - Supermicro SSE-X3348S Installation Manual

Chapter 1
Introduction
1-1

Overview

The SSE-X3348S/SSE-X3348SR switch is a high-performance top-of-rack switch,
designed for data center operating environments. The switch provides 48 10G Small
Form Factor Pluggable Plus (SFP+) ports, four 40G Quad SFP+ (QSFP+) ports, and
two 1G RJ-45 ports (see Figure 1-1 below). The switch also includes replaceable dual
power supply units and a fan tray module.
The switch supports a full set of Layer 2 switching, data center bridging, and Layer 3
routing features. The switch can be deployed as a top-of-rack (TOR) or distributed spine
switch to form a network fabric that can reduce infrastructure expenses and power
consumption in the data center. This network fabric can be used to interconnect tens of
thousands of servers delivering cloud computing services.
The SSE-X3348S switch provides front-to-back (F2B) airflow cooling. The companion
product, SSE-X3348SR, provides a "reverse" airflow – back-to-front (B2F). The airflow
options enable flexibility on rack deployment with servers or other switches, allowing
cool aisles to be maintained without creating "hot loops."
1-1