Riverstone Networks 9000 - Manual (Page 5)

Highest availability for the enterprise
The OmniSwitch 9000s carry on Alcatel’s tradition of providing the highest availability possible to support the
demands of IP communications and mission-critical applications, all at an enterprise price. Providing the
highest availability to the enterprise ensures that users have constant access to resources and services at all
times. To ensure the highest levels of availability, the OmniSwitch 9000s provide:
• Distributed architecture, where each NI autonomously supports functions, such as source learning, Spanning
Tree functions, and L2/L3 forwarding
• Redundant modules and sub-components (CMMs 1 , fans and PSUs)
• Hot swappable modules and sub-components (NIs, CMMs 1 , fan trays, PSUs, SFPs and XFPs)
• Hitless loading of optional software (routing / security), without re-booting
• Image rollback to automatically re-load previous configurations and software versions
Resiliency – maximized network uptime
Network resiliency is critical to providing network availability. The OS9000s offer a superior architecture with
no single point of failure and a sub-second fail-over in its redundant configuration. If there is a CMM failure
the OmniSwitch 9700 and 9800 are able to provide continuous operation with no loss of connections when
configured with dual CMMs. Existing L2/L3 traffic, including voice conversations, will continue seamlessly
without interruption.
For single CMM configurations, network resiliency is achieved through switch redundancy, network path
redundancy, and the L2/L3 protocols for smart use of the switch and path redundancy. In this configuration,
the OS9600 has the best price / performance ratios.
A L C AT E L 5 >
Alcatel OmniSwitch 9000
OmniSwitch 9700
CPU
CPU CPU
CPU
X X X X
Virtual Switching Fabric
CMM Monitoring
& Sychronization
CMM A
Active Control Standby Control
Standby Gigabit
Ethernet Connection
Active Gigabit
Ethernet Connection
CMM B NI 8 NI1
STP BPDU
ARP Request
Locally Processed
Requests
Centrally Processed
Requests
Routing Update
Management Access
Principle of operation for distributed intelligence
1 Requires dual CMMs in either the OS9700 or the OS9800