Specifications

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Extreme Management Center for
Insights, Visibility and Control
The VDX family of switches, including VDX 6940 can be
managed by Extreme Management Center (XMC). XMC
includes a suite of applications, empowering administrators
to deliver a superior quality experience to end users
through a single pane of glass and a common set of tools to
provision, manage and troubleshoot the network. It works
across wired and wireless networks, from the edge to the
data center and private cloud.
XMC provides a consolidated view of users, devices and
applications for wired and wireless networks – from data
center to edge. Zero touch provisioning lets one quickly
bring new infrastructure online. A granular view of users,
devices and applications with an easy to understand
dashboard enables ecient inventory and network
topology management.
XMC also provides ecosystem integration, includes o the
box integrations with major enterprise data center virtual
environments such as VMWare, OpenStack and Nutanix
to provide VM visibility and enforce security settings. Get
more information on Extreme Management Center.
Meets Today’s Application
Demands with High Performance
and Low Latency
As data centers virtualize more of their servers and VM
density per server increases, organizations will require
higher bandwidth connectivity to support the explosion
of data and application processing. With 1/10 GbE and
40 GbE options, VDX 6940 switches deliver the high-
performance computing needed to keep up with
the demands of a virtualized data center, allowing
organizations to reduce network congestion, improve
application performance, and meet the capacity required
by 10 GbE servers. The 40 GbE and 100 GbE uplinks
can easily aggregate high-bandwidth trac and reduce
bottlenecks that occur when aggregating multiple 10 GbE
or 40 GbE connections, keeping data center networks
working at peak performance.
In an Extreme VCS fabric, VDX 6940 switches also help
maximize network utilization with hardware-based Extreme
Inter-Switch Link (ISL) Trunking. Organizations can create
a 120 GbE Extreme ISL trunk by utilizing three 40 GbE
ports or 12 10 GbE ports between VDX 6940 switches.
The Extreme ISL trunk is automatically formed between
two Extreme VDX switches when they are linked together,
allowing trac to be equally distributed among all ports.
This increases link eciency and limits trac disruptions,
especially during high-trac times. Also, 40 GbE and
10 GbE trunking is supported between VDX 6940, 6740,
and 8770 switches. Refer to the Extreme Networks OS
Management Configuration Guide for more information.
Extreme Metro VCS technology provides an innovative
solution to interconnect data centers and their trac
flows over distance, guaranteeing supported trac
characteristics. Metro VCS technology configured for
regular Ethernet trac supports 10 GbE ISLs up to 80 km,
40 GbE ISLs up to 40 km, and 100 GbE ISLs up to 40
km. To configure Metro VCS technology for lossless trac
applications (DCB/FCoE), refer to the Metro VCS Pre-
deployment Guide for details.
VDX 6940 switches oer a unique balance between two
conflicting attributes—buer and latency. Niche products
with very high buer often suer from high latency, and
products with ultra-low latency are not a good fit for data
centers with bursty trac. VDX 6940 switches, with a
purpose-built data center chip, excel in optimizing buer
and latency to deliver better application performance.
These switches deliver 800 ns any-port-to-any-port latency.
In addition, they oer an industry-leading 24 MB deep
buer. This provides the buering capacity to handle
increases in trac, especially during peak times when ports
are congested, allowing trac to be distributed across
the ports. VDX 6940 switches also feature a single ASIC
design, instead of multiple ASIC designs commonly found
in other switches. This improves performance since all ports
communicate via the one ASIC.
Cloud and Big Data Environments
VDX 6940 switches deliver optimized buer and latency
and high performance to enable greater cross-sectional
bandwidth for east-west trac—exactly what cloud
workloads demand. These switches oer the flexibility
needed to scale out networks, deliver intelligence to more
eectively manage VM mobility, as well as provide an
SDN-enabled and programmable infrastructure. In addition,
VDX 6940 switches oer an advanced feature set that
non-virtual and Big Data environments require. With 10, 40,
and 100 GbE options for designing oversubscribed or non-
oversubscribed networks, high throughput, and optimized
buer and latency, the VDX 6940 is an ideal switch for
Big Data applications. Together with Extreme data center
fabrics, VDX 6940 switches can simplify network design
and operations for both cloud and Big Data network fabrics.