Mellanox SN2010 User Manual
SWITCH SYSTEM
SN2000 Series
®
Mellanox Spectrum
HIGHLIGHTS
• Freedom of NOS choice, no vendor lock-in
• Forms a predictable data center
• Zero packet loss (learn more)
• Future proof solution ; enhanced scalability
• Supports speeds of 1/10/25/40/50 and 100GbE
• SN2100 and SN2010 have a unique, half-width,
TOR form factor
• Throughput of up to 6.4Tb/s
• Sub 300ns, industry leading, true, cut-through latency
• 16MB dynamically-shared, exible packet buffering
• Lowest power, under 5W per 100GbE port
-based 1/10/25/40/50/100GbE Open Ethernet Platforms
Overview
The SN2000 switch series is comprised of ONIE (Open Network Install
Environment) based platforms which support the mounting of a multitude of
operating systems and utilize the advantages of Open Networking and the
Mellanox Spectrum®ASIC capabilities.
The SN2000 switches are ideal for leaf and spine data center network solutions,
allowing maximum exibility, with port speeds spanning from 10Gb/s up to
100Gb/s per port and port density that enables full rack connectivity to any server
at any speed. The uplink ports allow a variety of blocking ratios that suit any
application requirement.
The SN2000 series introduces the world’s lowest latency for a 100GbE switching
and routing element, and does so while having the lowest power consumption in
the market. With the SN2000 series, the use of 25, 40, 50 and 100GbE in large
scale is enabled without changing the power infrastructure facilities.
The SN2000 series offers three modes of operation:
• Preinstalled with Mellanox Onyx (successor to MLNX-OS Ethernet), a home-
grown operating system utilizing common networking user experiences and
an industry standard CLI.
• Preinstalled with Cumulus™ Linux, a revolutionary operating system, taking
the Linux user experience from servers to switches and providing a rich
routing functionality for large scale applications.
• Bare metal including ONIE image ready to be installed with the
aforementioned or other ONIE-mounted operating systems.
page 2
What is Open Ethernet?
The current landscape of proprietary Ethernet switches limits the foundation of
compute and storage clouds and Web 2.0 infrastructures. The “Open Ethernet”
initiative is an alternative approach to traditional closed-code Ethernet
switches that provides customers with full exibility and freedom to customdesign their data center in order to optimize utilization, efciency, and overall
return on investment.
The Open Ethernet initiative is based on a complete separation between
the switch hardware and the switch software. In simple terms, it allows IT
managers and data center planners the option to make independent selections
with regard to their switching equipment and to “mix and match” offerings
from different equipment vendors to achieve optimal conguration and have
better control of both capital and operational expenditures.
The hardware drivers expose Open API, which is a standard, open interface
that allows integration into any Open Ethernet protocol and application.
Examples of such applications are the Quagga routing suite, OpenFlow agent,
or a vendor-developed application.
APPLICATIONS
OPERATING SYSTEM
Linux Switch
HARDWARE
OS Installer
Figure 1. Open Ethernet Operating System and Hardware
ONIE and Mellanox Spectrum Linux Switch
The Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) is an Open Compute Project open source initiative driven by a community to dene an open “install
environment” for bare metal network switches, such as the Mellanox SN2000 series. ONIE enables a bare metal network switch ecosystem where
end users have a choice of different network operating systems. Any Network Operation System (NOS) such as Microsoft® SONiC or Dell® EMC
OpenSwitch which runs on top of ONIE can be easily deployed with the SN2000 series.
Spectrum Linux Switch enables users to natively install and use any standard Linux distribution as the switch operating system. Spectrum Linux Switch
is based on Switchdev, a Linux kernel driver model for Ethernet switches. It breaks the dependency of using vendor-specic, closed-source software
development kits (SDK). The open-source Linux driver is developed and maintained in the Linux kernel, replacing proprietary APIs with standard Linux
kernel interfaces to control the switch hardware. This allows off-the-shelf Linux-based networking applications to operate on the Spectrum switch for
L2 switching and L3 routing, including open source routing protocol stacks, such as Quagga, Bird and XORP, OpenFlow applications, or user-specic
implementations.
Mellanox Onyx
Mellanox Onyx (successor to MLNX-OS Ethernet) is a high performance, exible and cloud-scale switch operating system, designed for the demands of
next-generation data centers. Whether building a robust storage fabric, cloud, nancial or media & entertainment fabric, customers can leverage the
exibility of Onyx to tailor their network platform to their environment.
With built-in workow automation, monitoring and visibility tools, such as WJH advanced streaming telemetry technology providing real-time network
visibility including actionable details on abnormal network behavior, enhanced high availability mechanisms, and more, Mellanox Onyx simplies
network processes and workows, increasing efciencies and reducing operating expenses and time-to-service.
®
Cumulus-Linux
Cumulus Linux embodies native Linux networking. Supercharged versions of the kernel and other networking-related packages encompass the latest
industry thinking in networking while retaining compatibility with the full range of software available in Debian. The SN2000 series running Cumulus
Linux provides standard networking functions such as bridging, routing, VLANs, MLAGs, IPv4/IPv6, OSPF/BGP, access control, VRF and VXLAN overlays.
Cumulus-Linux running on top of Mellanox SN2000 series is a perfect t for customers with a need for automated-cloud deployments, Layer-3 to the
server deployments and “infrastructure as code” data-centers.
SONiC
Microsoft Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) is the rst solution to break monolithic switch software into multiple containerized
components. SONiC enables ne-grained failure recovery and in-service upgrades with zero downtime. At its core, SONiC is aimed at cloud networking
scenarios, where simplicity and managing at scale are the highest priority. All together with monitoring and diagnostic capabilities, SONiC is a perfect
t for the Mellanox SN2000 series.
page 3
Docker Containers
A docker container enables you to pack any piece of software and run it in an
isolated container on top of the Linux operating system. In contrary to VMs
which required a full copy of the operating system, containers bundle only
libraries and settings required by the software and, therefore, are much lighter
and more efcient. Dockers can be used to run and manage various applications
side-by-side in isolated containers and get better compute density, enabling
faster and secure delivery of new features. Mellanox Onyx support enables the
customer to share selected storage spaces between the various containers and
Onyx itself.
Figure 2. Docker Containers Support
VXLAN and EVPN
Modern data centers are moving to a layer 3 fabric which means running a routing protocol, such as BGP or OSPF, between the leaf and spine switches.
In order to provide layer 2 connectivity between hosts and VMs on different racks as well as maintain multi-tenant separation, a layer 2 overlay
solution is needed. VXLAN is the de facto technology for implementing network virtualization in the data center, enabling layer 2 segments to be
extended over an IP core (the underlay). The initial denition of VXLAN did not include any control plane and relied on a ood-and-learn approach for
MAC address learning. Practical deployments of VXLAN without a control plane often use a controller. With Cumulus Linux, Ethernet Virtual Private
Network (EVPN) is a standards-based control plane for VXLAN that allows the building and deploying of VXLANs at scale, removing the vendor-specic
controller dependency. Cumulus EVPN supports redundancy, trafc engineering, multi-tenant separation, and fast convergence for host and VM mobility
— all while interoperating between vendors.
High Availability
The Mellanox SN2000 series switches were designed for high availability from both a software and hardware perspective.
Key high availability features include:
• 1+1 hot-swappable power supplies and four N+1 hot-swap fans (supported on SN2700 and SN2410)
• Color coded PSUs and fans
• Up to 64 10/25/40/50/100GbE ports per link aggregation group
• Multi-chassis LAG for active/active L2 multi-pathing
• 64-way ECMP routing for load balancing and redundancy
End-to-end 100GbE Solution
The SN2000 is part of Mellanox’s complete end-to-end solution which provides 10GbE through 100GbE interconnectivity within the data center. Other
devices in this solution include ConnectX® network interface cards and LinkX® copper or ber cabling. This end-to-end solution is topped with Mellanox
NEO®, a management application that relieves some of the major obstacles when deploying a network. NEO enables a fully certied and interoperable
design, speeds up time to service and eventually speeds up ROI.
The SN2000 series introduces superior hardware capabilities including dynamic exible shared buffers and predictable wire speed performance with
no packet loss for any packet size. While the SN2000 Ethernet switch series is aimed for the 25/50/100GbE market, Mellanox offers similar systems for
the 10/40GbE market. SN2000B switches are priced comfortably for the 10/40GbE market and provide the superior feature set of Spectrum.
The SN2000 series supports all standard compliances and is fully interoperable with third party systems.
Loading...