Test and Analysis of basic performance of 10-ge Switches

There are many things worth learning about the 10-ge switch. Here we mainly introduce the basic performance testing knowledge of the 10-ge switch. Network World recently conducted a 10-ge switch test on the 10-ge data center, analysis of vswitches from Arista, Blade, Cisco, Dell, Extreme and HP, each 10-ge vswitch must have at least 0.24 million m interfaces. They compared these products in 10 different ways and put them through a three-month fatigue stress test.

Although each switch can provide some good performance, they chose Arista's DCS-7124S and Blade's G8124 as the top spot in this test. The best combination of functionality and performance, especially in terms of latency and jitter indicators, won the two 10-ge switches their wise choice award. Dell and Extreme products can also pass through in this respect.

The biggest surprise was Cisco and HP. Cisco's Nexus 5010 is the only product that fully supports data/storage convergence. Its lengthy list of features contains some good virtualization features. However, its high latency, poor availability, and multicast leakage prevent Nexus 5010 from winning the test. HP's ProCurve 6600-24XG is the most mediocre in this test. Although it is ahead in terms of MAC address scalability, it is the only vswitch that does not provide line-rate unicast and multicast throughput. To facilitate the comparison, they asked the vendors involved in the test to fill out an extended feature questionnaire. Although manufacturers have recovered more than 100 problems, they are mainly concerned with some important differentiated features. First, they decided not to compare their prices, because the actual prices and manufacturers' prices were too different.

Comparison of Basic Performance

Arista, Blade, and Cisco vswitches support both 1-gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet transceiver, which is a useful feature, it is useful when the data center needs to migrate from the Gigabit connection of most servers to the 10-Gigabit connection in the next year or two. Cisco Nexus 5010 is the only vswitch in this test that provides local FC interfaces and full FCoE support. The optional FC components include 2G, 4G, and 8G. Although other vswitches can also forward FCoE traffic, they are somewhat like Ethernet switches support IPv6, and even do not know that the forwarded frames contain IPv6 headers.

All switches that participate in the test support redundant power supplies and are equipped with redundant fans, except for Extreme switches. Arista and Blade are also designed to provide backup out-of-band management ports. Fans of Arista, Cisco, Dell, and HP switches are hot-swappable.

The airflow is a big problem that needs to be considered in the data center. vendors have adopted various methods to ensure the cooling of their 10-ge switches. Vswitches of Arista, Blade, and HP can flexibly design the air duct from the front to the back or from the back to the front, depending on whether the switch is for hot channels or cold channels. Cisco's switches have even overturned the Orthodox design. Their interfaces are arranged on the back of the 10-ge switch, and Cisco says the design is the least messy.

Although the data center switch that is connected to the virtual machine runs in a layer-2 switching mode, many network designs will involve at least some layer-3 routes. In this test, all devices except Cisco Nexus 5010 can be used for routing between subnets, Static Routing, or Open Shortest Path OSPF ). The Blade, Dell, and Extreme vswitches also support OSPF v3 IPv6 packet routing.

The data center switch supports the server failover protocol and the internal switch link, which not only improves the normal running time, but also eliminates the need for other redundant protocols such as the Spanning Tree. All 10-ge switches that participate in the test can use link aggregation to aggregate multiple physical connections into a single local link, regardless of the server or internal exchange connection.

Some vendors have done more in this regard and can supplement or replace the Spanning Tree of internal exchange links. The multi-link aggregation MLAG Technology of Arista allows the active-active multi-host connection between the server and the internal switching link, using the LACP ). The Blade also provides HotLinks, an active-passive Redundancy mechanism applicable to internal switching links, which can work without generating trees.

A Cisco Nexus switch provides a virtual port channel (VPC) that allows you to define logical servers and internal switching links for multiple physical ports. Extreme Summit x650 supports automatic protection and switching based on standard Ethernet EAPS) for active-passive failover between 10-Gigabit switches, HP's ProCurve switch uses the patented active-active mesh protocol for load balancing of upstream switches.

The MLAG of Arista provides the standard-based LACP to work with any other device that supports link aggregation) and the benefits of operating in active-active mode. In view of various patented mechanisms, Cisco VPC can also create multiple virtual switches and routing domains within or across Nexus switches.