EX8216 System Overview

EX8216 Switch Hardware Overview

• Benefits of the EX8216 Switch

• Software

• Chassis Physical Specifications, LCD Panel, and Midplane

• Routing Engines and Switch Fabric

• Line Cards

• Cooling System

• Power Supplies

Benefits of the EX8216 Switch

Support for Virtual Chassis—EX8216 switches support Virtual Chassis technology. You can configure EX8200 switches in a Virtual Chassis and manage and operate them as a single network entity by using the XRE200 External Routing Engine.

High capacity—With a total capacity of up to 12 Terabits per second (Tbps), EX8216 is a powerful modular platform that delivers the performance, scalability, and high availability required for high-density data center, campus aggregation, and core switching environments.

Support for Juniper Networks Service Now solution—EX8200 switches support the Juniper Networks Service Now solution, a comprehensive set of tools that enable Juniper Networks J-Care Technical Service offerings to automate the delivery of tailored, proactive network intelligence and support services.

Software

The Juniper Networks EX Series Ethernet Switches run Junos OS, which provides Layer 2 and Layer 3 switching, routing, and security services. The same Junos OS code base that runs on EX Series switches also runs on all Juniper Networks M Series, MX Series, and T Series routers and SRX Series Services Gateways.

Chassis Physical Specifications, LCD Panel, and Midplane

EX8216 switches are designed to optimize rack space and cabling. The EX8216 switch is 21 rack units (21 U) in size (1/2 rack). Two EX8216 switches can fit in a standard 42 U rack. See Figure 1 and Figure 2 and Chassis Physical Specifications of an EX8216 Switch.

Figure 1: EX8216 Switch Front

Figure 2: EX8216 Switch Rear

The EX8216 switch has a chassis-level LCD panel that displays Routing Engine and switch fabric status as well as chassis components’ alarm information for rapid problem identification. The LCD panel provides a user-friendly interface for performing initial switch configuration, rolling back a configuration, or restoring the switch to the factory default configuration. See LCD Panel in an EX8200 Switch.

The EX8216 chassis midplane distributes the data, control, and management signals to system components and distributes power throughout the system. See Midplane in an EX8216 Switch.

Routing Engines and Switch Fabric

System management and system control functions of an EX8216 switch are performed by the Routing Engine (RE) module. An RE module contains a Routing Engine. The RE modules are hot-insertable and hot-removable field-replaceable units (FRUs) that are installed in the front of the chassis in the slots labeled RE0 and RE1. A base configuration (AC version) EX8216 switch has one RE module. A redundant configuration (AC and DC versions) EX8216 switch has a second RE module for redundancy. See Routing Engine (RE) Module in an EX8216 Switch and EX8216 Switch Configurations.

The Switch Fabric (SF) modules provide the switching functionality to an EX8216 switch. The SF modules are hot-insertable and hot-removable FRUs. All eight SF modules are installed in the rear of the chassis in the slots labeled SF7 through SF0. In an EX8216 switch, all eight SF modules are active and must be installed in the switch for normal operation. If a single SF module fails, the input/output traffic for that module is load-balanced among the remaining SF modules, providing graceful degradation in midplane performance. The impact of an SF module failure on the performance of an EX8216 switch varies based on the type of line cards installed in the switch and the traffic mix flowing through them. In an EX8216 switch configuration that is fully loaded with 8-port 10-Gigabit Ethernet SFP+ line cards, if one SF module fails, the remaining seven SF modules still have sufficient switching capacity to maintain continuous switch operation at full wire-rate performance. See Switch Fabric (SF) Modules in an EX8216 Switch.

The EX8216 switch can also be connected to an XRE200 External Routing Engine. An XRE200 External Routing Engine is used to connect multiple EX8200 switches into a Virtual Chassis. See XRE200 External Routing Engine Hardware Overview.

Line Cards

The EX8216 switch features 16 horizontal line card slots and supports wire-rate performance for all packet sizes for the installed line cards. The line cards in EX8200 switches combine a Packet Forwarding Engine and Ethernet interfaces on a single assembly. They are FRUs, and you can install them in the slots labeled 0 through 15 on the front of the switch chassis. All line cards are hot-insertable and hot-removable.

Twelve line cards are available for EX8200 switches. The extra-scale line card models provide larger IPv4 and IPv6 route table sizes than the non-extra-scale models to store more unicast routes.

Table 1 shows the model numbers and descriptions of the line cards available for EX8200 switches.

Cooling System

The cooling system in an EX8216 switch consists of two hot-insertable and hot-removable FRU fan trays. Each fan tray contains nine fans. Both fan trays install vertically on the left front of the chassis and provide side-to-side chassis cooling and front-to-side cooling. The top and bottom fan trays are identical and interchangeable. However, only the top fan tray cools the SF modules installed in the rear of the chassis. See EX8216 Cooling System.

Power Supplies

Power supplies for the EX8216 switch are fully redundant, load-sharing, and hot-insertable and hot-removable FRUs. Each EX8216 switch chassis can hold up to six AC or DC power supplies.

Table 2 shows the details of the power supplies available for EX8216 switches.

The redundant AC configuration ships with six AC power supplies to provide the capacity to power the system using N+1 or N+N power redundancy. See AC Power Supply in an EX8200 Switch and EX8216 Switch Configurations.

The redundant DC configuration ships with four DC power supplies. The dual inputs of the DC supplies provide direct support for N+N power redundancy. The redundant configuration also provides sufficient capacity for N+1 redundancy in most configurations; if necessary, up to two additional DC supplies can be added to the system. See DC Power Supply in an EX8200 Switch and EX8216 Switch Configurations.

EX8216 Switch Configurations

Table 3 lists the seven sample hardware configurations for an EX8216 switch—base (AC), redundant (AC and DC versions), and fully loaded chassis (AC and DC versions)—and the components included in each configuration.

The switch is shipped in only four of these seven configurations: base (AC), redundant (AC with 2000 W AC power supplies), redundant (AC with 3000 W AC power supplies), and redundant (DC).

EX8216 Switch Hardware and CLI Terminology Mapping

This topic describes the hardware terms used in EX8216 switch documentation and the corresponding terms used in the Junos OS command line interface (CLI). See Table 4.