New Arista Gigabit Ethernet Switch Features Citrix NetScaler VPX

The Arista 7048 is a data center class wire-speed multi-layer Gigabit Ethernet switch capable of delivering up to 40 gigabits of interconnect capacity. It runs the Arista Extensible Operating System (EOS) and is the first such switch to incorporate the Citrix Systems NetScaler VPX load balancing and application security software. The switch itself is multi-layered, with forty-eight RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet ports and four 1/10Gb Ethernet uplinks, and is excellent for the creation of Cloud Networking designs, especially when coupled with the Arista 7100 series.

"As traffic loads increase, Gigabit Ethernet switches require more buffering and non-blocking performance between the leaf and spine,” said Doug Gourlay, Vice President of Marketing at Arista. "The Arista 7048 has been purpose-built to handle high traffic loads within the switch and with Citrix NetScaler VPX integration, load balancing across servers within a rack is now much simpler. Joining forces with Citrix has enabled Arista to set a new standard for data center class networking.”

The Arista 7048 is based on EOS, the data center network operating system already shipping on the Arista 7100 Series of 1/10GbE switches. The Citrix Systems NetScaler VPX is able to cope with the speed mismatches, which appear in the case of high throughput and bursty traffic patterns of storage, video, market data feeds, and Web 2.0 applications. This ability is complemented by the large buffering capability on every port of the Arista 7048 (when in combination with an architecture built especially for congestion management), namely up to 50ms of traffic buffer on all ports simultaneously.

"Advanced load balancing and traffic management are critical services within any cloud data center," said Klaus Oestermann, group vice president and general manager of the Networking and Cloud Group at Citrix. "Integration of NetScaler VPX and Arista 7048 switches makes NetScaler's market leading load balancing, acceleration and security functionality immediately available to any application connected to an Arista network."

The new switch is already available and will also be showcased at the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas (Dec 1-4, 2009) in the Arista Networks booth # K-10.