Allied Telesis AT-SB*81CFC960, Installation Manual

Page: 76 / 356

Chapter 3: AT-SBx81CFC960 Controller Fabric Card
76 Section I: Hardware Overview
Guidelines
Here are several functions of the controller card:
 Chassis Management
—
The controller card is used to monitor
and configure the parameter settings on the Ethernet line cards.
The controller card supports local management sessions through
the Console RS-232 port and remote management sessions with
Telnet, Secure Shell (SSH), or SNMP clients on workstations on
your network.
 Management software
—
The controller card stores its own
management software as well as the management software for the
Ethernet line cards. It downloads the firmware to the cards over the
backplane in the chassis when the chassis is powered on or reset,
as part of the initialization process.
 Configuration Settings
—
The controller card also maintains a
configuration database in which it stores its own settings as well as
the settings of the Ethernet line cards. When a change is made to
a configuration setting on a line card, the controller card transmits
the change over the backplane to the appropriate line card and
updates its configuration database. The database is retained even
when the chassis is powered off because controller card stores it in
nonvolatile memory. You may download the database to a
management workstation or network server to maintain a history of
configurations or to transfer a configuration to multiple chassis.
 Backplane Control
—
The chassis has a backplane. The Ethernet
line cards use the backplane to forward traffic to each other when
the ingress and egress ports of packets are located on different
cards. The backplane is managed by the controller card. The
bandwidth of the backplane depends on the number of controller
cards in the chassis. Each line card slot has up to 80Gbps of
backplane bandwidth when the chassis has one controller card
and up to 160Gbps with two controller cards.
 VCStack Plus feature
—
The controller card can be used to create
a stack of two chassis that operate as a single, virtual switch,
which can simplify network operation and management. For more
information, refer to Chapter 15, “VCStack Plus Overview” on page
301.
 SFP+ slots
—
The SFP+ slots on the front panel may be used with
SFP+ 10Gbps transceivers to add high speed uplink ports for the
Ethernet line cards or to build a trunk between two chassis for the
VCStack Plus feature.
Here are the guidelines to the controller card:

The chassis must have at least one controller card. The line cards
do not forward traffic if the chassis does not have at least one