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Solutions · AI Data Center

Architecting the AI-Ready Data Center

For Network ArchitectsFor IT Directors

Deterministic performance for the AI era — built on the Arista 7010X, 7060X, and 7260X. Lossless Ethernet, port-speed flexibility, and an operating system designed to self-heal under load.

27,648
10/25 GbE servers in a 7260CX-64 two-tier reference design (3:1 oversubscription)
Source: Arista 7260CX-64 reference architecture · scale varies by oversubscription & platform
AI-ready data center fabric
The Shift

From north-south traffic to east-west reality

The data center has moved from predictable north-south traffic to the explosive east-west demands of HPC and large-language-model training. The 3:1 oversubscription model that worked for general-purpose workloads becomes an immediate bottleneck under collective communication patterns. The goal now is deterministic performance — guaranteeing every GPU in a cluster gets the bandwidth it needs, exactly when it needs it.

Lossless Ethernet

Making the impossible possible for AI

Ethernet was originally a "best-effort" medium — fine for web traffic, problematic for AI. We turn it into a lossless transport.

RoCEv2 transport

RDMA over Converged Ethernet offloads transport from the host CPU to the NIC, giving GPUs direct memory access without involving the host.

PFC + ECN

Priority Flow Control pauses specific traffic classes; Explicit Congestion Notification manages transmission rate. Together they keep the fabric from dropping a single AI packet.

1:1 NIC-to-GPU ratio

Modern AI clusters provision one NIC per GPU with matching PCIe Gen5 x16 bandwidth — so the network never throttles compute.

Non-blocking, low-latency

Peer-to-peer GPU access at the throughput collective operations require. The fabric stays out of the way of computation.
Port flexibility

The "Swiss Army Knife" of ports — solving stranded capacity

A common rack-design mistake is stranded capacity: plenty of theoretical bandwidth, but unusable because of port-speed mismatch. The 7060X4, 7060X5, 7060X6, and 7260X3 let you partition a single QSFP100 port into 10G, 25G, 40G, 50G, or 100G modes — true investment protection without forklift upgrades when optics evolve.

In a 2RU 7260CX-64 form factor, that means up to 64×100G, 256×25G via breakout, 258×10G, or 128×50G. The same physical hardware supports two-tier leaf-spine networks for 27,648 10/25 GbE servers in a 3:1 oversubscription reference design — at predictable 550 ns – 1500 ns latency. Other Arista platforms scale differently: 7700R4 Distributed Etherlink reaches 4,608 × 800 GbE hosts in a non-blocking 2-tier AI design; 7050X has been documented at 110,000+ 10G servers in ultra-large-scale multi-path topologies.

EOS Architecture

A self-healing brain for the fabric

The Extensible Operating System runs all processes in protected memory and shares state through an in-memory database (Sysdb). Modular by design.

Stateful Fault Containment

A failed protocol process is isolated to its own memory space — no system-wide crash, no fabric-wide outage from a single component fault.

Stateful Fault Repair

A failed process automatically restarts and resyncs from the in-memory database. Self-healing without a reboot, without operator intervention.

Hitless ISSU

Live software patching and hitless MLAG ISSU keep the fabric up during maintenance — no scheduled outage windows for routine upgrades.
The 7010X edge

Gigabit is still a powerhouse — for the right job

The Arista 7010X handles the management plane: out-of-band access, IPMI port connectivity, and the supporting connections that let your data plane run cleanly. 296 Gbps throughput and 220 Mpps in a 1G edge switch is generous, but the real value is EOS consistency. The same image, the same automation scripts, the same ZTP workflows, and the same monitoring tools as your production fabric — no weak link at the edge.

Operational details

Efficiency and structural integrity at 2 AM

Power and cooling are the limiting factors in a dense AI rack. The details that matter are the ones a tired operator notices in a hot aisle.

Sub-0.3W per Gbps

The 7010X draws less than 0.3W per Gbps. The 7060X uses Platinum-rated power supplies (>93% efficiency). Power budget is real budget.

Tool-less rails

No hardware kits, no missing screws — rapid install in tight rows where you can't bring a toolbox.

Color-coded airflow

Blue for rear-to-front, red for front-to-rear PSUs and fans. Hot-swaps don't become cooling mistakes.

Reversible airflow

Field-reversible fan modules adapt the switch to your cooling design — not the other way around.
Pre-sales support

Plan an AI-ready fabric with us

Topology design, optic selection, EOS configuration, and the 2 AM details — before the racks are populated.

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