Arista Networks Unveils New Switching Platform

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The Arista 7500 Series switch takes up 11U in a standard rack, with front-to-back cooling.

In the 18 months since its public launch, Arista Networks has built a base of more than 300 customers for its switching products, including a meaningful beachhead in the high frequency trading market. Today it is unveiling the Arista 7500, a switching platform the company describes as a defining product in its drive to win share in the data center networking market.

The Arista 7500 is a modular switch that provides 10 terabits per second of switching capacity and 384 wirespeed 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports in 11 rack units. Arista also is touting the 7500's energy efficiency and design, which employs a front-to-back airflow pattern.

The new switch is built to support transitions from 1 Gigabit Ethernet to 10 Gigabit, with an eye towards future support for 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet.

Bechtolsheim: 'Fundamental Advance'
"The Arista 7500 is a fundamental advance in the state-of-the-art of data center Ethernet switching," said Andy Bechtolsheim, Arista's chairman and chief development officer. "This platform was designed and engineered with the performance and capability to continue to scale and address the most challenging and demanding data center requirements, including future 40Gb and 100Gb Ethernet."

The 7500 Series runs Arista’s Extensible Operating System and is available now and already "in production in mission-critical facilities today." Pricing starts at $140,000, which the company says can work out to less than $1,200 per wirespeed port.

Arista's use of a front-to-back airflow design - instead of the side-to-side airflow seen in many networking products - was key to the improved energy efficiency, according to Doug Gourlay, vice president of marketing at Arista. "We went with a straight-through airflow design and we were able to use low-power fans," Gourlay said. The 7500 features a power supply with 93 percent efficiency and a one-time step-down.

Dell: 7500 'Ideal' for Cloud Computing
“When deploying a cloud infrastructure in the data center, network performance, power efficiency, low latency and scalability are all key considerations,” said Forrest Norrod, vice president and general manager of the  Server Platform Division at Dell, which among the many Arista partners and analysts offering comment on the new platform. “The architecture of the Arista 7500 is ideally suited for cloud computing and a great match for Dell’s PowerEdge server and EqualLogic iSCSI storage solutions where an uncompromised cloud network is critical for delivering the optimal customer experience.”

"Cloud networking requires a new class of scale, price/performance, and resilience previously not addressed with existing modular switches,” said Jayshree Ullal, president and CEO of Arista Networks. “The introduction of the Arista 7500 is significant and transformational to customers and the 10GbE market – this platform ushers in the next phase of the data center industry.”