H3C S10500X-G switch series is a series of Ethernet core switches specifically designed for the core layer of cloud computing data centers and next-generation intelligent campuses. Running the H3C proprietary Comware 7 operating system, it offers a trusted and secure platform. With redundancy designs for the main components including the supervisor engine units (also called MPUs), switch fabric modules, fan trays, and power supplies, it delivers carrier-grade high reliability. It offers high-density GE/10GE/25GE/40GE/100GE and 400GE ports, supports mainstream technologies such as VXLAN, MDC, M-LAG and IRF 2, and integrates rich networking services including MPLS VPN, IPv6, embedded AC, and traffic analytics. It uses green designs from the hardware components to the chassis exterior and is fully compliant with the RoHS directive.
The S10500X-G series switch includes the S10506X-G, S10508X-G and S10512X-G models, with port density and performance to fit different deployment scales.
The system architecture incorporates the following advanced designs:
CLOS+ architecture and midplane-free design separate the forwarding plane and control plane completely and allows bandwidth scaling as business grows.
Orthogonal interconnection of switching fabric modules and service modules eliminates cabling on the backplane and thus significantly reduces signal attenuation, with slot bandwidth up to 3.1Tbps on S10506X-G/S10506X-G-PoE and 4.6Tbps on S10508X-G/S10512X-G.
Compliant with 100G and 400G Ethernet standards, meeting the requirements of non-blocking campus networks today and in the future.
High-density GE/10GE/25GE/40GE/100GE ports, meeting the requirements of applications today and in the future.
400G Ethernet ports, meeting inter-data center and inter-campus connection requirements.
Thorough system optimization enables the device to forward traffic within 100 seconds after power on, greatly reducing service interruption time.
New chassis dimension design enables the device to carry high-performance data forwarding within a small size, greatly improving cabinet space usage efficiency.
Redundancy design for key components including MPUs, switch fabric modules, fan trays, power supplies, and power switches, maximizing the system availability and guarding the device against emergency and unexpected conditions.
The switch innovatively uses distributed control engines, detection engines, and maintenance engines to deliver powerful control capability and millisecond-level HA.
Distributed control engines: Each service module is integrated with a strong control and processing system. It can efficiently process varieties of protocol packets and control packets, and provide refined control for protocol packets to safeguard against protocol packet attacks.
Distributed detection engines: Each service module can use BFD and OAM to detect faults in milliseconds and interact with control plane protocols for fast failover and convergence to ensure service continuity.
Distributed maintenance engines: The intelligent CPU system supports intelligent power management and online status monitoring of key components. It can power on and off modules in sequence, which reduces power impulse, electromagnetic radiation, and power consumption, and prolongs the device lifespan.
H3C Intelligent Resilient Framework 2 (IRF 2) virtualizes multiple S10500X switches into one logical switch called an IRF fabric. IRF improves system performance and delivers the following benefits:
High availability: The H3C proprietary routing hot backup technology ensures redundancy and backup of all information on the control and data planes and non-stop Layer 3 data forwarding in an IRF 2 fabric. It also eliminates single point of failure and ensures service continuity.
Redundancy and load balancing: The distributed link aggregation technology supports load sharing and mutual backup among multiple uplinks, which enhances the network redundancy and improves link resources usage.
Simplified topology and easy management: An IRF fabric appears as one node and is accessible at a single IP address on the network. This simplifies network device and topology managements, improves operating efficiency, and reduces maintenance cost.
MDC virtualizes one S10500X-G switch into multiple logical switches, enabling multiple services to share one core switch. The 1:N virtualization maximizes switch utilization, reduces network TCO, and ensures secure isolation of services.
The S10500X-G series switch supports M-LAG, which enables links of multiple switches to aggregate into one to implement device-level link backup. M-LAG is applicable to servers dual-homed to a pair of access devices for node redundancy.
Streamlined topology: M-LAG simplifies the network topology and spanning tree configuration by virtualizing two physical devices into one logical device.
Independent upgrading: The DR member devices can be upgraded independently one by one to minimize the impact on traffic forwarding.
High availability: The DR system uses a keepalive link to detect multi-active collision to ensure that only one member device forwards traffic after a DR system splits.
The switch offers a wide range of solutions for data center virtualization and network convergence, including:
VXLAN: A MAC-in-UDP technology that provides Layer 2 connectivity between distant network sites across an IP network. It also enables service isolation between different tenants.
Edge Virtual Bridging (EVB): Uses the Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator (VEPA) mode to switch traffic of VMs to a physical switch connected to the server for processing. This not only ensures traffic forwarding between VMs, but also enables VM traffic policing and access control policy deployment.
MP-BGP EVPN (Multiprotocol Border Gateway Protocol Ethernet Virtual Private Network) uses standard-based BGP protocol as the control plane for VXLAN overlay networks, providing BGP based VTEP auto peer discovery and end-host reachability information distribution. MP-BGP EVPN delivers many benefits, such as eliminating traffic flooding, reducing full mesh requirements between VTEPs via the introduction of BGP RR, achieving optimal flow-based end to end load sharing and more.
The switch offers comprehensive IPv6 features, including:
IPv6 routing: IPv6 static routing, RIPng, OSPFv3, IS-ISv6, and BGP4+.
IPv4-to-IPv6 transition: IPv6 manual tunnel, 6to4 tunnel, ISATAP tunnel, GRE tunnel, and IPv4-compatible automatic tunnel configuration.
The switch supports hardware-level encryption technology MACsec (802.1AE), which is an industry-standard security technology that provides secure communication for all traffic on Ethernet links. Compared with traditional application-based software encryption technology, MACsec provides point-to-point security on Ethernet links between directly connected nodes and is capable of identifying and preventing most security threats.
The device uses green designs from hardware components to the chassis exterior.
Water-based paint without electroplating for the chassis exterior significantly reduces carbon emissions.
Strict front-to-rear air flow reduces the airflow resistance and improves heat dissipation efficiency, allowing side-by-side deployment of cabinets.
The fan trays provide area-based refined, intelligent speed adjustment and reduce the speed regulation response time to seconds, saving power consumption significantly.
