Ethernet switches meet bandwidth demands of 10G data centres

In today's enterprise data centres, more than 60% of installed servers continue to run Gigabit Ethernet (1GbE) network connections. The majority of these server ports are expected to transition to 10GbE over the next four years. The Trident-II+ switches enable networking OEMs to deliver a full portfolio of enterprise-optimised, feature-rich, high-density 10GbE ToR, blade and aggregation switches to serve this transition.

Built on Broadcom's StrataXGS architecture, the 28nm Ethernet switches provide a simple, drop-in power and efficiency improvement for the industry's leading switch silicon, with a comprehensive set of feature and performance upgrades.

"Over the past five years, multiple StrataXGS Trident generations have helped drive the adoption of 10GbE in cloud and mega scale data centres with standard, cost-efficient, merchant silicon based platforms," said Ram Velaga, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Network Switch, Broadcom. "Our latest Trident-II+ series offers the economics, performance and virtualisation capabilities required to lead a similar transition across enterprise data centres worldwide."

Designed for enterprise data centres of all sizes, the Trident-II+ switches deliver the industry's most comprehensive and field-proven feature set for network virtualisation. This includes single-pass VXLAN routing that doubles gateway performance in all network topologies, as well as support for pre-standard GENEVE overlays.

"The collaboration between Broadcom and VMware to define and build robust underlay-overlay technologies allows customers today to deploy fully virtualised networks for greater operational efficiency," said Hatem Naguib, Vice President, Networking and Security, VMware. "Mainstream enterprises using our VMware NSX network virtualisation platform on top of a StrataXGS Trident-II+ based physical network get first-class VXLAN support as well as future support for Geneve, enabling efficient, secure and agile data centre networks."

Providing a suitable complement to Broadcom's latest StrataXGS Tomahawk and StrataDNX switch SoCs, the Trident II+ switches provide 100GbE connections to the spine layer and between racks, while supporting 10GbE connections to the servers in enterprise and private cloud deployments.

"Enterprise data centres are still in the early stages of a very large upgrade to 10GbE servers and 10GbE top of rack switches," said Seamus Crehan, Crehan Research, President. "At the same time, there is growing demand for cost-effective 100GbE spine switches. As a result of these two parallel upgrades, we forecast strong enterprise data center demand for optimised high density 10GbE switches with 100GbE uplinks through the end of the decade."

Power consumption and cooling is also a top priority in modern data centres. The Ethernet switches reduce power dissipation of existing Trident-II designs throughout the network by up to 30% for each typical ToR switch chipset. For an enterprise data centre hosting 300 ToR switches, this can lead to annual power savings of well over 100MWh, resulting in greater IT energy efficiency and lower operating expenses.