Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch Performance Test A Report on the: Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch October, 2013 © Lippis Enterprises, Inc.
Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch Performance Test Acknowledgements We thank the following people for their help and support in making possible this firstevaluation of the fastest 40GbE data center Ethernet switch: We thank the following people for their help and support in making possible this first evaluation of the fastest 40GbE data center Ethernet switch: Bradley Wong, Distinguished Engineer at Cisco, Lilian Quan, Technical Marketing Engineer at Cisco and Arun Selvarajan Technical Marketing Engineer for their
Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch Performance Test Cisco Systems Nexus® 9508 Cisco recently launched its Nexus® 9500 series of data center switches which Cisco promises offers the highest port density of 10/40GbE and future 100GbE—the most power efficient, the most programmable and fastest packet forwarding modular data center switch in the industry. To verify these claims, Cisco engaged the Lippis/Ixia team to test the new Nexus® 9508 modular data center switch.
Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch Performance Test Cisco Nexus® 9508 Test Configuration Hardware Device under test Cisco Nexus 9508 http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ Test Equipment (3) Ixia XG12 High Performance Chassis ® Software Version Port Density NXOS 6.1(2)I1(1) 288-40GbE IxOS 6.40 EA IxNetwork 7.10 EASP1 (32) Xcellon-Multis XM40GE12 QSFP+FAN 40GE Load Module http://www.ixiacom.com/ Cabling Ixia’s Multis CXP-to-3-40GE QSFP Active Optical Cable (AOC) http://www.ixiacom.
Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch Performance Test ports. Lastly, the Nexus® 9508 ran a prerelease version of NXOS 6.1(2)I1(1) operating system. Cisco Nexus® 9508 RFC 2544 L3 Throughput Test 100% Throughput % Line Rate 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% 64 100 128 100 256 100 512 100 1024 100 1280 100 1518 100 2176 100 9216 100 Cisco Nexus® 9508 RFC 2889 48-port Congestion Test 100 % Line Rate 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Agg Forwarding Rate (% Line Rate) 64 77.969 128 77.845 256 77.848 512 77.846 1024 77.
Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch Performance Test To understand how the Cisco Nexus® 9508 behaves during periods of congestion, we stressed the Nexus 9508 switch processing and buffer architecture’s congestion management subsystems. To achieve this goal, one group of four 40GbE ports was configured for congestion testing. The Nexus® 9508 demonstrated nearly 78% of aggregated forwarding rate as percentage of line rate during conges¬tion conditions for L3 traffic flows.
Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch Performance Test Discussion The Cisco Nexus® 9508 offers the lowest latency and highest throughput for L3 unicast and IP multicast traffic, and demonstrated efficient congestion management behavior. The Nexus 9508 was designed for 40GbE aggregation in data centers; as server connectivity transitions from 1GbE to 10GbE, the core of the network is also transitioning from 10GbE to 40GbE at scale.
Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch Performance Test The Lippis Report Test Methodology To test products, each supplier brought its engineers to configure its equipment for test. An Ixia test engineer was available to assist each supplier through test methodologies and review test data. After testing was concluded, each supplier’s engineer signed off on the resulting test data. We call the following set of testing conducted “The Lippis Test.
Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch Performance Test Test Methodology: If the ports are set to half duplex, collisions should be detected on the transmitting interfaces. If the ports are set to full duplex and flow control is enabled, flow control frames should be detected. This test consists of a multiple of four ports with the same MOL.
Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch Performance Test Integrity statistics. The test is patterned after the ATSS Throughput test; however this test uses multicast traffic. A one-to-many traffic mapping is used, with a minimum of two ports required. If choosing OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) or ISIS (Intermediate System-Intermediate System) as IGP (Internet Gateway Protocol) protocol routing, the transmit port first establishes an IGP routing protocol session and PIM session with the DUT.
Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch Performance Test Terms of Use This document is provided to help you understand whether a given product, technology or service merits additional investigation for your particular needs. Any decision to purchase a product must be based on your own assessment of suitability based on your needs. The document should never be used as a substitute for advice from a qualified IT or business professional.
Cisco Nexus® 9508 Switch Performance Test About Nick Lippis Nicholas J. Lippis III is a world-renowned authority on advanced IP networks, communications and their benefits to business objectives. He is the publisher of the Lippis Report, a resource for network and IT business decision makers to which over 35,000 executive IT business leaders subscribe.
