The highly flexible, high-performance Juniper Networks QFX5100 line of switches provides the foundation for the dynamic data center. As a critical enabler for IT transformation, the data center network supports cloud and software-defined networking (SDN) adoption, as well as rapid deployment and delivery of applications. Mission-critical applications, network virtualization, and integrated or scale-out storage are driving the need for more adaptable networks. With its perse set of deployment options, including fabric, Layer 3, and spine and leaf, the QFX5100 is the universal building block for data center switching architectures, enabling users to easily adapt as requirements change over time.
Featuring a built-in Insight technology capability, the QFX5100 provides valuable performance and troubleshooting data via microburst monitoring and hotspot statistics. The QFX5100 can also be used as a high-performance QFabric node in Juniper's high-scale QFabric system, deployed in Juniper's virtual chassis fabric switching architecture, and installed in Juniper's existing virtual chassis switching architecture.
Automation
The QFX5100 switch supports a number of features for network automation and Plug-and-Play operations. Features include zero-touch provisioning, operations and event scripts, automatic rollback, and Python scripting. The switch also offers support for integration with VMware NSX Layer 2 gateway services, puppet, and OpenStack.
Flexible forwarding table
The QFX5100's flexible forwarding table (FFT) allows the hardware table to be carved into configurable partitions of Layer 2 media access control (MAC), Layer 3 host, and long prefix match (LPM) tables. In a pure L2 environment, the QFX5100 supports 288,000 MAC addresses. In L3 mode, the table can support 128,000 host entries, and in LPM mode, it can support 128,000 prefixes. Junos OS provides configurable options through a command-line interface (CLI) so that QFX5100 can be optimized for different deployment scenarios.
Intelligent buffer management
The QFX5100 switch has a total of 12 MB shared buffers. While 25% of the total buffer space is dedicated, the rest is shared among all ports and is user configurable. The intelligent buffer mechanism in the QFX5100 effectively absorbs traffic bursts while providing deterministic performance, significantly increasing performance over static allocation.
Insight technology for analytics
The QFX5100 provides dynamic buffer utilization monitoring and reporting with an interval of 10 milliseconds to provide microburst and latency insight. It calculates both queue depth and latency, and logs messages when configured thresholds are crossed. Interface traffic statistics can be monitored at two-second granularity. The data can be viewed via CLI, system log, or streamed to external servers for more analysis. Supported reporting formats include Java script object notification (JSON), CSV and TSV. These files can be consumed by orchestration systems, SDN controllers, or network management applications to make better network design decisions and identify network hotspots.
MPLS
QFX5100 switch supports a broad set of MPLS features, including L3 VPN, IPv6 provider edge router (6PE), RSVP traffic engineering, and LDP to allow standards-based network segmentation and virtualization. The QFX5100 can be deployed as a low-latency MPLS label-switching router (LSR) or MPLS PE router in smaller scale environments. The QFX5100 is the industry's compact, low-latency, high-density, low-power switch to offer an MPLS feature set.
FCoE
As a fiber channel over Ethernet (FCoE) transit switch, the QFX5100 provides an IEEE data center bridging (DCB) converged network between FCoE-enabled servers and an FCoE-enabled fiber channel storage area network (SAN). The QFX5100 offers a full-featured DCB implementation that provides strong monitoring capabilities on the top-of-rack switch for SAN and LAN administration teams to maintain clear separation of management. In addition, FCoE initiation protocol (FIP) snooping provides perimeter protection, ensuring that the presence of an Ethernet layer does not impact existing SAN security policies. FCoE link aggregation group (LAG) active/active support is available to achieve resilient (dual-rail) FCoE connectivity.
