The two families at a glance

Why these are aggregation spine switches

Access switches connect end devices, and something has to carry their combined traffic onward. That is the aggregation layer, and in a leaf-and-spine design it is the spine. These switches are built for that job in two ways. They have deep packet buffers, which absorb traffic bursts that would overflow the shallow buffers on most access and leaf switches. And they are R Series routers, so they handle large routing tables and Layer 3 forwarding as well as switching. The 7020R and 7280R share that design and differ in size and port density.

The families in brief

7020R: a compact 1RU deep-buffer switch, built on the same design as the 7280R. It comes with gigabit copper or 10G fiber access ports and 10G or 100G uplinks, so it suits smaller aggregation and peering roles where space and power matter.

7280R: a broad family across three hardware generations, the 7280R, 7280R2 and 7280R3. Port speeds run from 10G up to 400G, with buffers from 4 GB to 32 GB, so it covers everything from 10G aggregation to 400G spine.

Which family do I need?

• You need gigabit copper ports on a routing switch: the 7020R is the only family here with 48 gigabit copper ports.
• You are aggregating 10G links and want 100G uplinks: a 7020R or a 7280R with 10G SFP+ ports.
• You are moving to 25G: look at the 7280R2 and 7280R3 models with 25G ports.
• You run a 40G spine: the 7280R has 40G models.
• You want a 100G spine: the 7280R has dense 100G models.
• You need 400G: only the 7280R3 models have 400G ports.
• Your traffic is bursty or you peer with other networks: either family, with the larger buffers on the 7280R.
• You need larger ACL tables or routing tables: the 7280R has variants with each. Their part numbers are explained on the 7280R page.

FAQ

What does deep-buffer mean?
Deep packet buffers hold gigabytes of traffic rather than megabytes, so a burst of traffic is queued instead of dropped. This matters most at the spine, the data center edge and peering points.

Can I mix the 7020R and 7280R in one network?
Yes. Both run Arista EOS and connect over standard Ethernet, so they work together as separate switches.

Where do these fit with Arista's access switches?
They sit above them. Access switches such as the 7010T, 7048 and 720XP connect end devices and uplink to an aggregation spine switch.

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