Cisco Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3032 for Dell M1000E Data Sheet
Data Sheet
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cannot be directed to another port and thus helping isolate a server from other servers in the same
blade enclosure.
High Availability
The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3032 offers several high-availability features to minimize network
downtime, maintain mission-critical servers and applications, and reduce TCO.
Enhancements to the standard Spanning Tree Protocol, such as Per-VLAN Spanning Tree Plus
(PVST+), UplinkFast, and PortFast, maximize network uptime. PVST+ allows 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.
The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3032 uses redundant power and cooling capabilities of the Dell
PowerEdge M1000e infrastructure to provide maximum availability to customers.
Advanced QoS
The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3032 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 3032 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 traffic flows and enforce policies based on Layer 2 and 3 QoS fields.
To implement QoS, the Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3032 first identifies traffic flows or packet
groups and classifies or reclassifies these groups using the differentiated services code point
(DSCP) field or the IEEE 802.1p class-of-service (CoS) field. Classification can be based on
criteria as specific as the source or destination IP address, source or destination MAC address, or
Layer 4 TCP or UDP port. At ingress, the Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3032 will also police to
determine whether a packet is in or out of profile; mark to change the classification label, pass-
through, or dropout of profile packets; queue packets based on classification; and queue services
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 3032
supports four egress queues per port, which allows the network administrator to be discriminating
and specific in assigning priorities for the 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 3032 supports Shaped Round
Robin (SRR) and strict priority queuing. The SRR queuing algorithm helps ensure differential
prioritization.
Management
The Catalyst Blade Switch 3032 comes with an embedded GUI device manager that simplifies
initial configuration of a switch. Users now have the option to set up the switch through a Web
browser. Users familiar with the Cisco command-line interface (CLI) can also use the CLI to
perform initial configuration and setup. Hence, users do not need any retraining.
The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3032 provides extensive management capabilities using SNMP
network management platforms such as CiscoWorks for switched internetworks. Managed with
CiscoWorks, Cisco Catalyst switches can be configured and managed to deliver end-to-end
device, VLAN, traffic, and policy management. As part of CiscoWorks, the Web-based