Brocade Communications Systems Bigiron RX Series Specification Sheet

data SHEEt
BRocadE
BIGIRoN
RX SERIES
HIGH-
PERFORMANCE
ETHERNET
SWITCHING
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
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