Description
IBM Ethernet r-series switches are designed to help address the needs of data centers and large enterprises where high-density Ethernet switches are needed. IBM Ethernet r-series switches include the four slot IBM Ethernet Switch B04R (4003- R04), eight slot IBM Ethernet Switch B08R (4003-R08), sixteen slot IBM Ethernet Switch B16R (4003-R16), and thirty-two slot IBM Ethernet Switch B32R (4003-R32) models. These switches offer high port capacity and density, based on the number of available slots, with up to 512 10-Gigabit Ethernet or 1536 1-Gigabit Ethernet ports in a single 32-slot chassis.
The IBM Ethernet r-series switches are designed for nonstop operation, supporting 1:1 management module redundancy, N+1 switch module redundancy, M+N power module redundancy, and N+1 fan redundancy. Each of these hardware components are hot-swappable, reducing service downtime. This hardware resiliency is designed to be enhanced with software resiliency including system failover, restart, MRP, VSRP, and VRRP for Layer 2 and Layer 3 resiliency.
Systems configured with dual management modules have subsection detection and failover. Hitless Management Failover (HMF) ensures that the forwarding engines on the line modules are not impacted by a management failover, and enables nonstop packet forwarding during a management failover. With hitless Layer 2 software upgrades and graceful restart routing, fast convergence occurs in the event of a management module failure.
The IBM Ethernet r-series switches are designed to help network planners deploy an Ethernet infrastructure that addresses today's requirements with a scalable architecture designed to support network growth and evolution. The switches incorporate the latest advances in switch architecture, system resilience, quality of service (QoS) and switch security in a family of modular chassis settings.
The switch architecture is an adaptive self-routing Clos switch fabric with a virtual output queue (VOQ) design. This nonblocking architecture is optimized for maximum throughput and low latency for all size packets. This scalable design can help with the reliable delivery of all IP-based voice, video, and data applications.
The switches ship with the Brocade IronWare software, embedded sFlow per port, advanced IPv4/IPv6 Ethernet Layer 2 switching, IPv4/IPv6 L3 routing, and multilayer security services.
The IBM Ethernet r-series switches are designed to support industry-leading Layer 2 features. To provide self-healing topologies in Layer 2 configurations, the switches support industry standard Ethernet protocols including Spanning Tree
