FortiSwitch-5003A system
The FortiSwitch-5003A board provides 10/1-gigabit fabric backplane channel layer-2 switching and 1-gigabit base backplane channel layer-2 switching in a dual star architecture for the FortiGate-5140 and FortiGate-5050 chassis. The FortiSwitch-5003A board provides a total capacity of 200 Gigabits per second (Gbps) throughput.
The FortiGate-5140 chassis is a 14-slot ATCA chassis and the FortiGate-5050 chassis is a 5-slot ATCA chassis. In both chassis the FortiSwitch-5003A board is installed in the first and second hub/switch fabric slots. For most versions of the FortiGate-5140 and 5050 chassis the hub/switch fabric slots are slots 1 and 2. For more information about these chassis see the FortiGate-5140 Chassis Guide and the FortiGate-5140 Chassis Guide.
You can use the FortiSwitch-5003A board for fabric and base backplane layer-2 switching for FortiGate-5000 boards installed in slots 3 and up in FortiGate-5140 and FortiGate-5050 chassis. Usually you would use the base channel for management traffic (for example, HA heartbeat traffic) and the fabric channel for data traffic. FortiSwitch-5003A boards can be used for fabric and base backplane layer-2 switching within a single chassis and between multiple chassis.
The FortiSwitch-5003A system also supports 802.3ad static mode layer-2 link aggregation, 802.1q VLANs, and 802.1s Multi-Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP) for the fabric channels. You can use these features to configure link aggregation and support redundant FortiSwitch-5003A switch configurations to distribute traffic to multiple FortiGate-5000 boards. The FortiGate-5000 boards must operate in Transparent mode, all are managed separately and all must have the same configuration.
A FortiSwitch-5003A board in hub/switch fabric slot 1 provides communications on fabric channel 1 and base channel 1. A FortiSwitch-5003A board in hub/switch fabric slot 2 provides communications on fabric channel 2 and base channel 2. If your chassis includes one FortiSwitch-5003A board you can install it in hub/switch fabric slot 1 or 2 and configure the FortiGate-5000 boards installed in the chassis to use the correct fabric and base backplane interfaces.
For a complete 10-gigabit fabric backplane solution you must install FortiGate-5000 hardware that supports 10-gigabit connections. For example, a FortiGate-5001A board combined with a FortiGate-RTM-XB2 module provides two 10-gigabit fabric interfaces. You can install the FortiGate-5001A boards in chassis slots 3 and up and FortiGate-RTM-XB2 modules in the corresponding RTM slots on the back of the chassis.
The FortiSwitch-5003A board includes the following features:
•One 1-gigabit base backplane channel for layer-2 base backplane switching between FortiGate-5000 boards installed in the same chassis as the FortiSwitch-5003A
•One 10/1-gigabit fabric backplane channel for layer-2 fabric backplane switching between FortiGate-5000 boards installed in the same chassis as the FortiSwitch-5003A
•Two front panel base backplane one-gigabit copper gigabit interfaces (B1 and B2) that connect to the base backplane channel
