Features and specifications

Note: Features and specifications listed in this section are based on Networking OS 7.9.

The RackSwitch G8264T has the following features and specifications:

• Form factor: 1U rack mount switch
  • RackSwitch G8264T Rear-to-Front version for ports located in the rear of the rack matching ThinkServer®, System x®, BladeCenter® and Flex System® designs
  • RackSwitch G8264T Front-to-Rear version for ports located in the front of the rack matching airflow of iDataPlex and NeXtScale System designs
• Ports
  • 48 RJ-45 ports for 1 Gb or 10 Gb Ethernet (support for 1000BASE-T or 10GBASE-T)
  • 4 ports for 40 Gb Ethernet QSFP+ transceivers, QSFP+ to QSFP+ DAC cables, or QSFP+ to 4x 10 Gb SFP+ break-out cables. QSFP+ modules and DAC cables are not included and must be purchased separately (see Table 3).
  • One 10/100/1000 Ethernet port (RJ-45 connector) for out of band (OOB) management
  • One RS-232 serial port (mini-USB connector) that provides an additional means to configure the switch
  • One USB port for mass storage devices
• Scalability and performance
  • 1 Gb, 10 Gb, and 40 Gb Ethernet connectivity for bandwidth optimization and performance
  • Up to 64 10 Gb Ethernet connections (with optional break-out cables)
  • Non-blocking architecture with wire-speed forwarding of traffic and aggregated throughput of 1.28 Tbps
  • Full line rate performance with 3.2 microseconds switching latency
  • Media access control (MAC) address learning: automatic update, support for up to 128,000 MAC addresses
  • Up to 128 IP interfaces per switch (IP interface 128 is reserved for out-of-band management)
  • Static and LACP (IEEE 802.3ad) link aggregation, up to 64 trunk groups with up to 16 member ports per trunk group
  • Support for jumbo frames (up to 9,216 bytes)
  • Broadcast/multicast storm control
  • IGMP snooping to limit flooding of IP multicast traffic
  • IGMP filtering to control multicast traffic for hosts participating in multicast groups
  • Configurable traffic distribution schemes over trunk links based on source/destination IP or MAC addresses, or both
  • Fast port forwarding and fast uplink convergence for rapid STP convergence
• Availability and redundancy
  • Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) for Layer 3 router redundancy
  • IEEE 802.1D STP for providing L2 redundancy
  • IEEE 802.1s Multiple STP (MSTP) for topology optimization, up to 32 STP instances are supported by a single switch
  • IEEE 802.1w Rapid STP (RSTP) provides rapid STP convergence for critical delay-sensitive traffic like voice or video
  • Per-VLAN Rapid STP (PVRST) enhancements
  • Layer 2 Trunk Failover to support active/standby configurations of network adapter teaming on compute nodes
  • Hot Links provides basic link redundancy with fast recovery for network topologies that require Spanning Tree to be turned off
• VLAN support
  • Up to 4095 VLANs supported per switch, with VLAN numbers ranging from 1 to 4095 (VLAN 4095 is used by the management network.)
  • Port-based and protocol-based VLANs
  • 802.1Q VLAN tagging support
  • Private VLANs support as defined in RFC 5517
• Security
  • VLAN-based, MAC-based, and IP-based access control lists (ACLs)
  • 802.1x port-based authentication
  • Multiple user IDs and passwords
  • User access control
  • Radius, TACACS+ and LDAP authentication and authorization
  • NIST 800-131A Encryption
  • Selectable encryption protocol
• Quality of Service (QoS)
  • Support for IEEE 802.1p, IP ToS/DSCP, and ACL-based (MAC/IP source and destination addresses, VLANs) traffic classification and processing
  • Traffic shaping and re-marking based on defined policies
  • Eight output Class of Service (COS) queues per port for processing qualified traffic
  • Weighted Random Early Detection (WRED) with Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to help avoid congestion
  • IPv4/IPv6 ACL metering
• IP v4 Layer 3 functions
  • Host management
  • IP forwarding
  • IP filtering with ACLs, up to 256 IPv4 ACLs supported
  • VRRP for router redundancy
  • Support for up to 128 static routes
  • Routing protocol support (RIP v1, RIP v2, OSPF v2, BGP)
  • Support for policy-based routing (PBR)
  • Support for DHCP Relay
  • Support for IGMP snooping and IGMP relay
  • Support for Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) in Sparse Mode (PIM-SM) and Dense Mode (PIM-DM).
• IPv6 Layer 3 functions
  • IPv6 host management
  • IPv6 forwarding
  • Support for static routes
  • Support for OSPF v3 routing protocol
  • IPv6 filtering with ACLs, up to 128 IPv6 ACLs supported
• OpenFlow 1.0 and 1.3.1 support
• Virtualization
  • Virtual NICs (vNICs) with Ethernet, iSCSI, or FCoE traffic on vNICs
  • Virtual link aggregation groups (vLAGs)
  • 802.1Qbg Edge Virtual Bridging (EVB) is an emerging IEEE standard for allowing networks to become virtual machine (VM)-aware.
    • Virtual Ethernet Bridging (VEB) and Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator (VEPA) are mechanisms for switching between VMs on the same hypervisor.
    • Edge Control Protocol (ECP) is a transport protocol that operates between two peers over an IEEE 802 LAN providing reliable, in-order delivery of upper layer protocol data units.
    • Virtual Station Interface (VSI) Discovery and Configuration Protocol (VDP) allows centralized configuration of network policies that will persist with the VM, independent of its location.
    • EVB Type-Length-Value (TLV) is used to discover and configure VEPA, ECP, and VDP.
  • VMready support
    • Up to 4,096 virtual entities (VEs)
    • Automatic VE discovery
    • Up to 4,093 local or distributed VM groups for VEs
    • NMotion™ feature for automatic network configuration migration
• Converged Enhanced Ethernet
  • Priority-Based Flow Control (PFC) (IEEE 802.1Qbb) extends 802.3x standard flow control to allow the switch to pause traffic based on the 802.1p priority value in each packet¡¦s VLAN tag.
  • Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS) (IEEE 802.1Qaz) provides a method for allocating link bandwidth based on the 802.1p priority value in each packet¡¦s VLAN tag.
  • Data Center Bridging Capability Exchange Protocol (DCBX) (IEEE 802.1AB) allows neighboring network devices to exchange information about their capabilities.
• Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
  • FC-BB5 FCoE specification compliant
  • FCoE transit switch operations
  • FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP) support for automatic ACL configuration
  • FCoE Link Aggregation Group (LAG) support
  • Supports 2,048 FCoE sessions with FIP Snooping by using Class ID ACLs
• Manageability
  • Industry-standard command line interface (isCLI)
  • Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP V1, V2 and V3)
  • HTTP/HTTPS browser GUI
  • Telnet interface for CLI
  • Secure Shell (SSH) v1 and v2 for CLI
  • Secure Copy (SCP) for uploading and downloading the switch configuration via secure channels
  • Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) for discovering network devices
  • Serial interface for CLI
  • Scriptable CLI
  • Dual software images
  • Firmware image update via TFTP, FTP, and Secure FTP (sFTP)
  • Network Time Protocol (NTP) and Precision Time Protocol (PTP) for switch clock synchronization
  • Netconf (XML)
  • Switch Center management application
• Monitoring
  • Switch LEDs for port status and switch status indication
  • Remote Monitoring (RMON) agent to collect statistics and proactively monitor switch performance
  • Port mirroring for analyzing network traffic passing through switch
  • Change tracking and remote logging with syslog feature
  • Support for sFLOW agent for monitoring traffic in data networks (separate sFLOW analyzer required elsewhere)

The following features are not supported with IPv6: 

• Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) and DHCP
• RADIUS, TACACS+ and LDAP
• VMware Virtual Center (vCenter) for VMready
• Routing Information Protocol (RIP)
• Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
• Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM)
• Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP)
• sFLOW