Brocade Communications Systems RX Series manual Purpose-built Feature Set for Demanding Networks

all size packets. Scalable to over two billion packets per second, the BigIron RX Series is the most powerful Ethernet switch family in the industry. This advanced and scalable design ensures the reliable deliver of all IP- based voice, video and data applications.

The BigIron RX switches ship with field- proven IronWare networking software and IronShield security, embedded sFlow per port, advanced Ethernet switching, IPv4/IPv6 routing and multilayer security services. The BigIron RX Series enables a user to deploy a reliable, secure and scalable networking solution today that is ready to accommodate tomorrow’s applications and technologies.

Purpose-built Feature Set for Demanding Networks

Industry-Leading Performance and Scalability

The BigIron RX Series is the industry’s most powerful switch family, delivering up to 3.2 terabits per second data throughput per system.

High-Availability Design

Redundant and resilient design ensures high availability operation for demanding environments:

•Redundant, hot-swappable components provide non-stop service delivery:

–Management Module: Systems configured with dual management modules with sub-second detection and fail-over

–Switch Fabric Element Redundancy:

Systems configured with a redundant switch fabric module support millisecond fail-over performance

–Hitless Management Failover (HMF):

Stateful failover ensures that the forwarding engines on the line modules are not impacted by a management failover. This capability enables non- stop packet forwarding in the event of a management module failover.

–Redundant Power Supplies: All three chassis support M+N power module redundancy for AC and DC power configurations

•Distributed Forwarding Architecture:

Advanced network processors, high- performance CPU and high-speed memory on each interface module provide for a scalable high-performance architecture

•IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation up to Eight Links: Scalable, cross-module trunking provides for resilient high- capacity connections between switches

•Resilient Layer 2 and Layer 3 protocols provide fast service restoration in event of link or equipment failures:

–Metro Ring Protocol optimized for ring topologies, IEEE 802.1s and 802.1w for general Layer 2 topologies, VSRP for redundant switch configurations and VRRP/VRRP-E for redundant router configurations, ECMP for routed backbones

Robust Layer 3 Feature Set

Brocade IronWare™ software suite includes scalable EGP and IGP routing protocols:

•BGPv4: Scalable to 4 million routes, 500 peers and 14,000 attributes with MR2 management module

•OSPF: Scalable to over 400,000 routes

•IS-IS:Support for Level 1 and Level 2, includes 25,000 routes and 512 adjacencies

•Brocade Direct Routing (BDR): The forwarding information base (FIB) is downloaded to the hardware-based forwarding engine on each line module. This memory can be pre-populated with as many as 512,000 IPv4 and 64,000

IPv6 routes for wire-speed routing performance.

•Policy-Based Routing (PBR): Support customizable routing policies using access control lists (ACLs). This feature can be used to balance network usage by controlling the network paths for different traffic flows.

•Comprehensive Multicast Feature Set:

Provides hardware-based support for a number of multicast protocols including MSDP, PIM-SM (Sparse Mode) and PIM-DM (Dense Mode), allowing network managers to efficiently deploy next-generation multicast applications

•VRRP and VRRPE (Enhanced VRRP):

Enables the BigIron RX to operate as

a backup router to other network routers. In the event of a router failure, the BigIron RX will automatically and seamlessly perform the tasks of the failed router.

Industry-Leading Layer 2 Features

To provide self-healing topologies in Layer 2 configurations, the BigIron RX supports industry standard Ethernet protocols including Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), Rapid Spanning Tree (RSTP), per VLAN STP (PVST) and per VLAN group STP (PVGST). The BigIron RX also supports Brocade Metro Ring Protocol (MRP) for sub-second service restoration in ring topologies. Additionally, the BigIron RX supports multi-instance spanning tree, VLAN topology grouping and VLAN tunneling for advanced Layer 2 service configurations.

system summary

Feature	BigIron RX-4	BigIron RX-8	BigIron RX-16	BigIron RX-32
I/O Module Slots	4	8	16	32
Switching capacity per system
Available data capacity	400 Gbps	800 Gbps	1.60 Tbps	3.2 Tbps
Total switch capacity	960 Gbps	1.92 Tbps	3.84 Tbps	5.12 Tbps
Packet forwarding capacity per system	286 Mpps	571 Mpps	1,142 Mpps	2.284 Mpps
Max 10-GbE ports per system	16	32	64	128
Max 1-GbE ports per system	192	384	768	1,536
Height (inches/rack units)	7"/4RU	12.25"/7RU	24.5"/14RU	57.75"/33RU
Airflow	Side-to-Side	Side-to-Side	Front-to-Back	Front-to-Back
Power supply redundancy	M+N	M+N	M+N	M+N

(M = Number of supplies needed for fully loaded system and N = 1 to M supply redundancy)