HP 12504 networking switch: Don’t let its size deceive you
By Steve Brar, Manager, Global Product Marketing, HP Networking
Each and every one of our customers is unique and your network needs are often very different from one another. You have data centers of all sizes supporting a variety of different applications. They vary from traditional servers to highly virtualized, may have tens to thousands of server. They may be supporting private clouds or simply a co-located data center in the campus. Regardless of the environment, HP has a right-sized solution that meets your challenge.
Introducing the HP 12504 Switch
We recently introduced an addition to our HP 12500 Series switches for the enterprise data center. The HP 12504 is a compact high-performance data center switch. Although it comes in a small 10-rack unit form-factor, it packs a powerful punch. The HP 12504 is ideal for small to mid-sized enterprises looking for a core-switching platform with high-end capabilities for demanding applications.
Figure 1: HP 12504 Switch Overview
FlexFabric architecture
The HP 12504 aligns with our FlexFabric network solution for the data center. By utilizing the HP 12504 along with HP access switching technologies, one can build a simpler, flatter, higher-performance data center architecture better suited for today’s highly virtualized and cloud computing applications.
Dependable and resilient
The 12504 is a highly-available, resilient switch with built-in features including:
- 4 hot-swappable resilient fabric modules
- 2 hot-swappable main processing unit (MPU) slots
- IRF-based in-service software upgrades
- 6 hot-swappable power supply slots for N+1 redundancy
- X fans for N+1 fan redundancy
- Deep buffering for reliable bursty traffic delivery
Scalable for growth
Although it comes in a small package, the 12504 provides a high-level of scalability. With support for both gigabit and 10 gigabit Ethernet, along with IRF technology the HP 12504 has the following capabilities:
- Up to 64 wire-speed 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports
- Up to 128 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports with 4:1 oversubscription
- Up to 192 wire-speed Gigabit Ethernet ports
- 4-chassis IRF support
- Backplane that scales to support 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit Ethernet
Plus, HP Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) technology allows you to create a single virtual switching fabric with up to 4 chassis all with a single management interface and single configuration file.
New innovations
The HP 12504 also includes recent innovations along with the rest of the 12500 series. Both Ethernet Virtual Interconnect (EVI) and Multi-tenant Device Context (MDC) are supported. These technologies allow you to connect up to 8 geographically dispersed data centers and enable multi-tenancy by virtualizing a single chassis into multiple logical devices. EVI and MDC can be used in conjunction with each other to deliver multi-tenancy across data centers.
What makes the HP 12504 a unique switch option
The HP 12504 Switch delivers powerful capabilities that enable advanced functionality for small and mid-sized data centers.
>> Learn more about the HP 12500 Series Series.
Read my colleagues' blogs talking about the data center today:
- Tell your data center story: Intelligent Resilient Framework for scalable, reliable data centers
- Simplicity: what Ethernet Virtual Interconnect brings to Data Center Interconnect
- What you need to know about data center switching and packet buffering
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