Arista DCS-7280CR3A-48D6-R | 7280R3A 48-Port 100G Switch, 6x 400G QSFP-DD

Q: What is the difference between the DCS-7280CR3A-48D6-R and -F models?
A: The -R suffix indicates rear-to-front airflow, where cool air enters from the port side and exhausts out the back. The -F model has front-to-rear airflow. Choose based on your data center hot aisle/cold aisle configuration for optimal cooling efficiency.

Q: Can the 100G QSFP ports support lower speeds?
A: Yes, the 100GbE QSFP ports support breakout configurations and can operate at 40G, 25G, and 10G speeds using appropriate transceivers and breakout cables, providing deployment flexibility for mixed-speed environments.

Q: What are the primary use cases for the 7280CR3A-48D6?
A: This switch is ideal for high-density data center leaf-spine architectures, AI/ML fabrics with east-west traffic, internet peering with large routing tables, EVPN-VXLAN overlay networks, and applications requiring deep buffers for burst absorption and lossless forwarding.

Q: Does this model include MACsec encryption?
A: The base DCS-7280CR3A-48D6-R model does not include MACsec. For hardware-based AES-256-GCM MACsec encryption, consider the DCS-7280CR3AM-48D6-R variant. For large route tables with MACsec, the DCS-7280CR3AK-48D6-R offers both features.

Q: What routing table scale does this switch support?
A: The standard R3A model supports typical data center routing tables. For internet-scale routing with over 256K routes or 5M+ routes with FlexRoute, the K-variant (DCS-7280CR3AK-48D6) is recommended for peering and MPLS applications.