White Papers

Arista Networks, a leader in high-speed, highly programmable data center switching, has outlined a number of guiding principles for integration with Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies, including controllers, switch hypervisors, cloud orchestration middleware, and customized flow-based forwarding agents. These guiding principles leverage proven, scalable, and standards-based control and data plane switching technologies from Arista.

The Arista advantage has resulted in a fast-growing company that has emerged to become the second leading player in the high-speed 10/40/100GbE switching market in the data center. Arista has achieved this by focusing solely on building the best products for the needs of high performance cloud data centers, and by building an organizational strategy and supporting structure that enables our customers to interact directly with our engineering team to explore and develop new products and features. We have a deep pool of executive talent that has successfully built innovative organizations and products across the industry over the past several decades, and who have brought innovation and dynamism back to networking.

. The Arista Advantage

The purpose and scope of this white paper is to discuss spanning tree interoperability between Arista and Cisco switches. It is written in a manner that assumes the reader has at least a moderate working knowledge of spanning tree protocol configuration and operation. Detailed explanations of the basic functionality of each spanning tree protocol is outside the scope of this document.

. Spanning Tree Protocol Interoperability with Cisco

Ethernet networks have evolved significantly since their inception back in the 1980s, with many generational changes to where we are today. Networks are orders of magnitude faster with 10Gbps line rate switching as the norm. Moreover, today’s Ethernet networks offer sub-microsecond switch latency, traffic scaling and load balancing across redundant interfaces, and are reducing the management complexities with state-driven architecture and open interfaces for managing hundreds of switches through global, yet highly secured interfaces. Software Driven Cloud Networking (SDCN) is a term often used when a controller external to the forwarding logic and the actual switch itself programs the network devices to alter or enhance the flow of traffic.

.Software Driven Cloud Networking(SDCN)（日本語訳あり）

This paper provides an overview of SAN and NAS storage solutions, highlights the ubiquitous role of 10 Gigabit Ethernet in these solutions, and illustrates how Arista's 7000 series of switches directly address this market.

.Role of 10Gb Ethernet in Storage Whitepaper （日本語訳あり）

Networks designed in the late 90s primarily addressed static applications and email. The future of cloud networking optimizes the following variables: guaranteed performance, low latency and any-to-any communication patterns.  Arista’s switching architectures and expanded 7000 family are designed to deliver the optimized cloud networking solution.

.Switching Architectures for Cloud Network Design （日本語訳あり）

The combination of virtualization and cloud computing creates a computing paradigm that requires careful network considerations.  A cloud network must support the abstraction of virtualization services from specific physical servers.

.Impact of Virtualization on Cloud Networking （日本語訳あり）

The drive for scalable and efficient cloud networks has led to 10Gb Ethernet as the interface of choice for simultaneously transporting data, storage and compute information over a common Ethernet cloud. Multiple classes of applications, rely on latency-optimized architectures for ultra fast response times.

.Architecting Low Latency Cloud Networks （日本語訳あり）

Arista Networks and PacketLight Networks have jointly developed and tested a set of solutions that leverage Arista’s market leading 100GbE port density and the PacketLight Networks PL-1000GM and PL-1000T. These solutions deliver a series of cost effective and scalable distance extension and media conversion solutions.

. Arista and PacketLight Networks 100GbE Distance Extension and Conversion

Arista Networks and MRV have jointly developed and tested a set of solutions that leverages Arista switches’ market leading 100GbE port density and MRV's market leading Optical Transport series to deliver cost effective and efficient distance extension and media conversion solutions. Interoperability testing was performed with a MRV LambdaDriver 400L.

.Distance Extension and Conversion Solutions for 100G