10 Gbps Line Card for WS-C4507R & WS-C4507R+E

[rayattechnology]

Hi,

I have a client with two 4500 switches, one is WS-C4507R and the second is WS-C4507R+E running as core switches for the 2900 PoE access switches they have.

Both switches have Sup6L supervisor module with IOS 5.0(2)SG1 and have three empty slots (one for redundant Sup, and two for linecards)

There is a need to upgrade the connection for certain servers and all accesss switches to 10Gbps

My issue, I'm unable to find any linecard usable for this upgrade. Can anyone help suggestion which models can we use?

Thanks,

[Jon Marshall · Accepted solution]

If the 4507R is a non E chassis there are no modules available because that chassis only supports 6Gbps per slot to the switch fabric.  

For the E chassis with your supervisor there is the WS-X4606-X2-E which supports 6 x 10Gbps ports but that supervisor only supports 24Gbps to the switch fabric so it is oversubscribed by 2.5:1.

In other words you can't expect all ports to run at wire speed.

I have never used that module but the documentation suggests you can run some ports are 1Gbps and some at 10Gbps but this still may not guarantee wire speed.

If you upgraded the supervisor you could then get 48Gbps per slot and you could run the 4712-SFP+E module which gives you 12 x 10Gbps ports but again this is 2.5:1 oversubscribed.

Bear in mind oversubscription is calculated by assuming all ports are transmitting at full speed simultaneously and this is often not the case so when I say they won't run at wire speed I am using that calculation.

But if for example each port never transmitted more than 3Gbps each then 6 x 3 = 18Gbps and you have a switch fabric connection of 24Gbps so no oversubscription.

The problem is can you guarantee that ie. if the client thinks they are getting 10Gbps on every port then they may well be disappointed when they realise it doesn't work that way.

If you really needed a lot of 10Gbps connectivity and you don't want oversubscription to be an issue then these switches are probably not the best choice to do that because for 10Gbps they will always be oversubscribed.

Or more specifically your E chassis might not be the best because your other chassis simply can't do this.

Like I say it really depends on how much throughput you need.

Jon

[rayattechnology]

Thanks Jon.

As the second chassis will not function, I beleive we will go with something like 3500/3700 10 Gbps switches to solve this issue.

But if you have time, I'd like to get more technical details about:

1. If the linecard is connecting devices on the same VLAN (no routing is required) will the traffic still go through the Supervisor module? (i.e. Are we still bounded by the 24 Gbps limit?)

2. I understand C4507R is an old one, but what is the difference between C4507R-E and C4507R+E?

Regards,

[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

#1 the supervisor card also provides the fabric, so traffic between line cards will be restrict to what it provides to the line card (plus restrict by what the line card supports)

#2 The R-Es are end-of-life and they support 6 or 24 Gbps per slot, while the R+Es support 6, 24 and 48 Gbps per slot.

[Jon Marshall]

Joe

Am I getting confused here ie. was there ever a 4507R chassis or was it always a 4507R-E chassis ?

Jon

[rayattechnology]

I got the following on the console, I'm not sure if it's useful

Core_1#sh module

Chassis Type : WS-C4507R

Power consumed by backplane : 40 Watts

Mod Ports Card Type                              Model              Serial No.

---+-----+--------------------------------------+------------------+-----------

1     6  Sup 6L-E 10GE (X2), 1000BaseX (SFP)    WS-X45-SUP6L-E     JAE160706QW

3    18  1000BaseX (GBIC)                       WS-X4418-GB        JAE1016ZZH6

5    48  10/100/1000BaseT (RJ45)                WS-X4548-GB-RJ45   JAE14031CA3

6    48  10/100/1000BaseT (RJ45)                WS-X4548-GB-RJ45   JAE14041NDP

Core_1#sh ver

Cisco IOS Software, Catalyst 4500 L3 Switch Software (cat4500e-IPBASE-M), Version 15.0(2)SG1, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc4)

Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport

Copyright (c) 1986-2011 by Cisco Systems, Inc.

Compiled Thu 25-Aug-11 09:14 by prod_rel_team

Image text-base: 0x10000000, data-base: 0x12AF7010

ROM: 12.2(44r)SG10

Darkside Revision 4, Nexu Revision 12, Fortooine Revision 1.32

Core_1 uptime is 11 weeks, 5 days, 1 hour, 1 minute

Uptime for this control processor is 11 weeks, 5 days, 1 hour, 2 minutes

System returned to ROM by power-on

System image file is "bootflash:cat4500e-ipbase-mz.150-2.SG1.bin"

cisco WS-C4507R (MPC8548) processor (revision 12) with 524288K bytes of memory.

Processor board ID FOX141

MPC8548 CPU at 1GHz, Supervisor 6L-E

Last reset from PowerUp

39 Virtual Ethernet interfaces

118 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces

2 Ten Gigabit Ethernet interfaces

511K bytes of non-volatile configuration memory.

[Jon Marshall]

Okay just checked the docs and I am not getting confused ie. there was a 4507R chassis before either of the E variants.

However I can't say for sure that is what you have from that output because I can't remember whether it shows the full chassis model in that output.

It does look to be a 4507R only though in which case you would need a new chassis and even then you are limited in terms of bandwidth so I'm not sure it would be worth it.

Jon

[rayattechnology]

Hi,

I beleive it's. The other switch is giving "-E" in the output.

Thanks for your detailed support, I'll move on with Nexus 5K instead of the upgrade, and will try to get the client a deal with Cisco for replacing the current 4500 chassis.

Regards,

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Jon, yes there was the 4507R and 4510R before the "E" variants.  Both supported dual sups and 6 Gbps per slot.  The "-E" of these provided 24 Gbps per slot and the "+R" 48 Gbps per slot.

[Jon Marshall]

1) With the 4500 architecture yes because the modules themselves have limited ASICs on them and so the packet is forwarded to the supervisor and then a lookup is done on the packet header within the supervisor.

The supervisor has a packet processing engine which stores the packet while the header is sent to the forwarding engine (also on the supervisor).

Once the destination has been determined the packet is then forwarded to the correct module.

As far as I know no packets can be locally switched on the module itself even if the ingress and egress ports were on the same module.

2) Is your chassis a 4507R-E because if it is I believe it will support that module ie. it provides 24Gbps connections to the switch fabric.

The difference between a 4507R-E and 4507R+E is simply the amount of bandwidth per slot the chassis can provide with the 4507R+E providing 48Gbps per slot.

Any other questions please feel free to ask.

Jon