Cisco Catalyst 4500-X User Manual

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Data Sheet

Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Series Fixed 10 Gigabit
Ethernet Aggregation Switch

Product Overview

Cisco® Catalyst® 4500-X Series Switch (Figure 1) is a fixed aggregation switch that delivers best-in-class
scalability, simplified network virtualization, and integrated network services for space-constrained environments in
campus networks. It meets business growth objectives with unprecedented scalability, simplifies network
virtualization with support for one-to-many (Cisco Easy Virtual Networks [EVN]) and many-to-one (Virtual Switching
System [VSS]) virtual networks, and enables emerging applications by integrating many network services.

The Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Series offers key innovations, including:

●

Platform Scalability: Delivers up-to 800 Gbps of switching capacity, capable of scaling up to 1.6-Tbps
capacity with the VSS technology. Future-proof investment with modular uplink and auto-detect 10 Gigabit
Ethernet and 1 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

●

High Availability: Delivers the network availability demanded by business-critical enterprise applications
through comprehensive high-availability capabilities, including VSS and EVN. Furthermore, innovative
features such as redundant hot swappable fans and power supplies with AC to DC, and DC to AC failover
remove single point of failure in network.

●

Application Monitoring: Enhanced application monitoring through Flexible Netflow and eight ports of line
rate bidirectional Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN)/Remote Switched Port Analyzer (RSPAN). In addition
Cisco IOS® XE Software provides the ability to host third-party applications.

●

Security: Support for Cisco TrustSec™ technology as well as robust control plane policing (CoPP) to
address denial of service attacks.

●

Simplified Operations: Support for Smart Install Director, providing a single point of management enabling
zero-touch deployment for new switches and stacks in campus and branch networks.

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Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Series Switch Family

Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Series provides scalable, fixed-campus aggregation solutions in space-constrained
environments. The solution provides flexibility to build desired port density through two versions of base switches
along with optional network module, providing line-rate 10GE capability. Both the 32-port and 16-port versions can
be configured with optional network modules and offer similar features. The Small Form-Factor Pluggable Plus
(SFP+) interface supports both 10 Gigabit Ethernet and 1 Gigabit Ethernet ports, allowing customers to use their
investment in 1 Gigabit Ethernet SFP and upgrade to 10 Gigabit Ethernet when business demands change, without
having to do a comprehensive upgrade of the existing deployment. The uplink module is hot swappable.

Following are key offering from this product family:

●

32 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet Port switch with optional module slot (Figure 1)

●

16 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet Port switch with optional module slot (Figure 2)

●

8 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet Port uplink module (Figure 3)

Figure 1. 32 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet Port Switch with Optional Uplink Module Slot

Figure 2. 16 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet Port Switch with Optional Uplink Module Slot

Figure 3. 8 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet Port Uplink Module

In addition, both 32 port and 16 port versions are available with front-to-back and back-to-front airflow. The
front-to-back airflow switch comes with matching burgundy color fan and power supply handle to indicate warm
side. Similarly, back-to-front airflow switch fan and power supply handles are color-coded in blue to indicate cool
side. Figure 5 and Figure 6 show rear view of the switch with front-to-back and back-to-back airflow respectively.

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Figure 4. Front-to-Back Airflow Rear View

Figure 5. Back-to-Front Airflow Rear View

Cisco Catalyst 4500-X switch provides redundant hot swappable fans and power supplies (Figure 7) for highest
resiliency with no single point of failure.

Figure 6. Redundant Fan and Power Supply

Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Switch Series Feature Highlights

Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Series Switch provides nonblocking 10 Gigabit Ethernet per port bandwidth and Cisco IOS
Flexible NetFlow for optimized application visibility. In addition to this, the enterprise-class Cisco Catalyst 4500-X
offers the following:

●

Performance and scalability

◦ 800-Gbps switching capacity with up to 250 Mpps of throughput
◦ External USB and SD card support for flexible storage options
◦ 10/100/1000 RJ-45 console and management port
◦ IPv6 support in hardware, providing wired-network-rate forwarding for IPv6 networks and support for dual

stack with innovative resource utilization

◦ Dynamic hardware forwarding-table allocations for ease of IPv4-to-IPv6 migration
◦ Scalable routing (IPv4, IPv6, and multicast) tables, Layer 2 tables, and ACL and quality of service (QoS)

entries to make use of eight queues per port and comprehensive security policies per port

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Product Number

Description

System

Base System

Front to Back Airflow:

●

32x10 GE SFP+/SFP - WS-C4500X-32SFP+

●

16x10 GE SFP+/SFP - WS-C4500X-16SFP+

Back to Front Airflow:

●

32x10 GE SFP+/SFP - WS-C4500X-F-32SFP+

●

16x10 GE SFP+/SFP - WS-C4500X-F-16SFP+

Expansion Module (Optional)

8x10 GE SFP+/SFP - C4KX-NM-8SFP+

Management Port

10/100/1000 Base-T

USB Port

Type A (storage and boot) up-to 4 GB

Dual Power Supply

Yes

Field Replaceable Fans

Yes (5 fans)

Fan Redundancy

No performance impact with single fan failure

Scalability

System Throughput

Up to 800 Gbps

IPv4 Routing in Hardware

Up to 250 Mpps

●

Infrastructure services

◦ Cisco IOS XE Software, the modular open application platform for virtualized borderless services
◦ Maximum resiliency with redundant components, Nonstop Forwarding/Stateful Switchover (NSF/SSO),

and In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU) support in a VSS enabled system

◦ Network virtualization through Multi-VRF technology for Layer 3 segmentation
◦ Automation through Embedded Event Manager (EEM), Cisco Smart Call Home, AutoQoS, and Auto

SmartPorts for fast provisioning, diagnosis, and reporting

●

Cisco Borderless Networks services

◦ Optimized application performance through deep visibility with Flexible NetFlow supporting rich Layer

2/3/4 information (MAC, VLAN, TCP flags) and synthetic traffic monitoring with IP service-level
agreement (SLA)

◦ Medianet capabilities to simplify video quality of service, monitoring, and security. In addition, multicast

features such as Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) and Source-Specific Multicast (SSM) provide
enterprise customers with the additional scalability to support multimedia applications

●

Investment protection and reduced TCO

Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Series eliminates the need for standalone solutions by integrating many network
services. Customers can lower the total cost of ownership while streamlining management and accelerating
deployment time. Integrated network services available on Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Series include:

◦ Application visibility and control (Flexible NetFlow, Cisco IOS Embedded Event Manager)
◦ Security with Cisco TrustSec

1

◦ Troubleshooting video or any User Datagram Protocol-based flows (Mediatrace)
◦ Video network readiness assessment (built-in traffic simulator with IP SLA Video Operation)
◦ Ability to run third-party applications (Wireshark)

Table 1 highlights the performance and scalability enhancements of the Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Series Switches.

Table 1. Cisco Catalyst 4500-X Switch Series Performance and Scalability Features

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Product Number

Description

IPv6 Routing in Hardware

Up to 125 Mpps

L2 Bridging in Hardware

Up to 250 Mpps

Media Access Control (MAC)
Entries

55K

Forwarding Entries

32x10 GE Port Base SKU: IPv4: 256K, IPv6: 128K
16x10 GE Port Base SKU: IPv4: 64K, IPv6: 32K

Flexible Netflow Entries

128K

Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN),
Remote Switched Port Analyzer
(RSPAN)

8 line rate bidirectional sessions (ingress and egress)

Total VLANs

4094

Total Switched Virtual Interfaces
(SVIs)

4094

IGMP groups

32K

Multicast routes

32x10 GE Port Base SKU: IPv4: 32K, IPv6: 32K
16x10 GE Port Base SKU: IPv4: 24K, IPv6: 12K

Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol (DHCP) Snooping Entries

12K (DHCP snooping bindings)

ARP Entries

47K

Spanning Tree Protocol Instances

10K

Jumbo Frame Support for Bridged
and Routed Packets

Up to 9216 bytes

High Availability and Resiliency

High Availability Solution

Virtual Switching System (VSS)

Number of stackable switches in
VSS

Up to 2

VSS Throughput

Up to 1.6 Tbps

Virtual Switch Link

1GE or 10GE

Max number of Virtual Switch
Links

8

In-Service Software Upgrade

Across the switches

Nonstop Forwarding with Stateful
Switchover

Across the switches

CPU and Memory

Onboard Memory (SRAM DDR-II)

4 GB

Port Buffers

32-MB Shared Memory

CPU

Dual Core 1.5 GHz

NVRAM

2 GB

Optional External Memory
(SD Card)

2 GB

QoS Features

Port Queues

8 Queues/Port

CPU Queues

64

QoS Entries

128K (64K ingress and 64K in egress) Shared with ACL

Aggregate Rate-Limiting

Ingress port or VLAN and egress VLAN or Layer 3 port

Rate-Limiting Level Types

Committed Information Rate (CIR), Peak Information Rate (PIR)

Aggregate Traffic Rate-Limiting
Policers (1K=1024)

16K