Cisco Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 for HP Data Sheet
Data Sheet
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The Private VLAN Edge feature isolates ports on a switch, helping to ensure that traffic travels
directly from the entry point to the aggregation device through a virtual path and cannot be directed
to another port. This can help isolate a server from other servers in the same blade enclosure.
High Availability
The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 offers several high-availability features to minimize network
downtime, maintain mission-critical servers and applications, and reduce total cost of ownership.
Enhancements to the standard Spanning Tree Protocol, such as Per-VLAN Spanning Tree Plus
(PVST+), UplinkFast, and PortFast, maximize network uptime. PVST+ allows for Layer 2 load
sharing on redundant links to efficiently use the extra capacity inherent in a redundant design.
UplinkFast and PortFast help reduce the standard 30- to 60-second Spanning Tree Protocol
convergence time. Loop Guard and Bridge Protocol Data Unit (BPDU) Guard provide Spanning
Tree Protocol loop avoidance.
Customers can achieve maximum power and cooling availability for a server farm data network
when a Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 uses the redundant power and cooling capabilities of the
blade enclosure.
Advanced QoS
The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 offers superior multilayer, granular QoS features to avoid
congestion and help ensure that network traffic is properly classified and prioritized. The Cisco
Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 can classify, police, mark, queue, and schedule incoming packets and
can queue and schedule packets at egress. Packet classification allows the network elements to
discriminate between various traffic flows and to enforce policies based on Layer 2 and Layer 3
QoS fields.
To implement QoS, the Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 first identifies traffic flows or packet
groups and classifies or reclassifies these groups using the differentiated services code point
(DSCP) field or the 802.1p class-of-service (CoS) field. Classification can be based on criteria as
specific as the source/destination IP address, source/destination MAC address, or Layer 4
TCP/UDP port. At the ingress, the Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 will also police to determine
whether a packet is in or out of profile; mark to change the classification label, pass through, or
drop out of profile packets; queue packets based on classification; and service based on
configured weights. Control plane and data plane ACLs are supported on all ports to help ensure
proper treatment on a per-packet basis. The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 supports four
egress queues per port, which allows the network administrator to be discriminating and specific in
assigning priorities for the various applications in the server farm. At egress, the switch performs
scheduling and congestion control. Scheduling is a process that determines the order in which the
queues are processed. The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 supports Shaped Round Robin
(SRR) and strict priority queuing. The SRR queuing algorithm helps to ensure differential
prioritization.