Allied Telesis SwitchBlade x3106 - Manual (Page 53)

SwitchBlade x3106 Installation Guide
53
AT-SBx31CFC Central Fabric Controller Card
The AT-SBx31CFC Central Fabric Controller card has three primary
functions:
 Chassis Management — The controller card is used to monitor
and configure the Ethernet line cards in the chassis. You may
manage the chassis locally through the Console RS-232 port on
the controller card or remotely using Telnet, Secure Shell (SSH),
and SNMP clients from workstations on your network.
 Configuration Settings — The controller card stores the
configuration settings of the Ethernet line cards and downloads the
settings to the cards when the chassis is powered on or new line
cards are installed. The settings are stored in a database file in
nonvolatile memory so that they are retained even when the
chassis is reset or powered off.
 Backplane Control — The controller card manages the backplane
of the chassis. The backplane is used by line cards to forward
traffic to each other, which occurs when the ingress and egress
ports of packets are located on different cards.
The amount of backplane bandwidth depends on the number of
controller cards in the chassis. If the chassis has only one
controller card and the card is installed in slot 4, line card slots 0 to
3 each have 20 Gbps of backplane bandwidth, while slot 5 has 40
Gbps, making that slot a good choice for a high speed uplink card,
such as the AT-SBx31XZ4 XFP Line Card. If the chassis has two
controller cards, line card slots 0 to 3 each have 40 Gbps of
backplane bandwidth.
Here are the guidelines for the controller card:
 The chassis must have at least one controller card. The line cards
do not forward traffic without a controller card in the chassis.
 The chassis may have either one or two controller cards.
 Two controller cards are recommended for redundancy and to
increase the backplane bandwidth for the Ethernet line cards.
 The controller cards must be installed in slots 4 and 5. If you are
installing only one controller card, Allied Telesis recommends
installing it in slot 4 so that you can use slot 5 for an additional
Ethernet line card.
Here are other features of the controller card:
 LEDs for monitoring the status of the Ethernet line cards.
 Power-saving eco-friendly button for turning the port and status
LEDs on and off on the line cards and controller cards.