10GE and Multi-Giga Forwarding
The switch offers all 10GE ports and working at wire-speed. It provides 10, 16, or 24 ten Gigabit ports: 10/1GE autosensing SFP+ ports and 1G/2.5G/5G/10G Base-T Multi-giga ports.
H3C Intelligent Resilient Framework 2 (IRF2)
H3C Intelligent Resilient Framework 2 (IRF 2) virtualizes multiple S6520X-SI switches into one virtual switch and provides the following benefits:
Scalability: IRF 2 allows you to add devices to the IRF 2 system easily. It provides a single point of management, enables switch plug-and-play, and supports software auto-update for software synchronization from the master to the new member devices. It brings business agility with lower total cost of ownership by allowing new switches to be added to the fabric without network topology change as business grows.
High availability: The H3C proprietary routing hot backup technology ensures redundancy and backup of all information on the control and data planes and non-stop Layer 3 data forwarding in an IRF 2 fabric. It also eliminates single point of failure and ensures service continuity.
Redundancy and load balancing: The distributed link aggregation technology supports load sharing and mutual backup among multiple uplinks, which enhances the network redundancy and improves link resources usage.
Flexibility and resiliency: The switch use standard 10GE ports instead of specialized ports for IRF links between IRF member devices. This allows customers to assign bandwidth as needed between uplink, downlink, and IRF system connections.
Wide Range of Advanced Features
The switch offers a wide range of features, including:
Modular software design: The switch uses modular design for software, which enables feature installation and removal on an as-needed basis. Refined physical architecture and optimized software workflows greatly reduce the end-to-end packet processing delay.
Software-defined networking (SDN): An innovative network architecture that separates the control plane from the forwarding plane, typically by using OpenFlow. SDN significantly simplifies network management, reduces maintenance complexities and costs, enables flexible traffic management, and offers a good platform for network and application innovations.
Virtual eXtensible LAN (VXLAN): A MAC-in-UDP technology that provides Layer 2 connectivity between distant network sites across an IP network. VXLAN enables long-distance virtual machine and data mobility and is typically used in data centers and the access layer of campus networks for multitenant services. The H3C implementation of VXLAN supports automatic VXLAN tunnel establishment with EVPN.
Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EVPN): A Layer 2 VPN technology that provides both Layer 2 and Layer 3 connectivity between distant network sites across an IP network. EVPN uses MP-BGP in the control plane and VXLAN in the data plane. EVPN provides the following benefits: Configuration automation; Separation of the control plane and the data plane; Integrated routing and bridging (IRB).
In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU) and Operation, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM): Ensure business continuity and improve Ethernet management and maintainability.
Comprehensive Security Control Policies
The switch supports AAA authentications (including RADIUS authentication) and dynamic or static binding of user identifiers such as user account, IP address, MAC address, VLAN, and port number.
Using the switch in conjunction with H3C IMC, it can manage and monitor online users in real-time and take prompt action on illegitimate behaviors.
The User Profile allows to define a set of policies based on user group in different application scenario.
The switch offers a large number of inbound and outbound ACLs and VLAN-based ACL assignments. This simplifies configurations and saves ACL resources.
High Availability
In addition to node and link protection, the switch offers the following hardware high availability features:
S6520X-16ST-SI and S6520X-24ST-SI offer 1+1 power module redundancy.
Automatic power and fan tray status monitoring and alarming mechanisms.
Automatic fan speed adjustment based on the change in temperature.
Self-protection mechanisms that protect power modules against overcurrent, overvoltage, and overtemperature conditions.
Outstanding Management Capacity
The switch provides a variety of management features and is easy to manage. It offers the following device management features:
Provides multiple management interfaces, including the console port, out-of-band management Ethernet port, and USB port.
Supports configuration and management from CLI or H3C IMC Intelligent Management Center.
Supports multiple access methods, including SNMPv1/v2c/v3, Telnet, and more secure SSH 2.0 and SSL.
Uses OAM to enhance system management capability.
Supports FTP for system upgrade.
Smart Management Center (SmartMC)
SmartMC is the H3C's latest offering and innovation that helps small and middle size enterprise network to address management issue and is free of charge, easy to use web management tool. SmartMC is embedded network management tool into the switch, it includes commander switches and other access switches.
SmartMC delivers the following benefits:
Intelligent operation: once the switch is powered on and SmartMC function is enabled, topology will be created automatically and user can go enhanced web GUI to check the latest status.
Centralized management: all management can be achieved via commander switch such as centralized configuration backup, and software version management, increasing working efficiency.
One key device replacement: in case of one switch failure, the new added same type switch can download the same configuration and work as old switch immediately
H3C S6520X-SI series switches support M-LAG, which enables links of multiple switches to aggregate into one to implement device-level link backup. M-LAG is applicable to servers dual-homed to a pair of access devices for node redundancy.
Streamlined topology: M-LAG simplifies the network topology and spanning tree configuration by virtualizing two physical devices into one logical device.
Independent upgrading: The DR member devices can be upgraded independently one by one to minimize the impact on traffic forwarding.
High availability: The DR system uses a keepalive link to detect multi-active collision to ensure that only one member device forwards traffic after a DR system splits.
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Products and Solutions
S6520X-16ST-SI: 16 × 1/10G SFP+ ports (2 Combo 1G/10G Base-T ports), 2 × power module slots 
Technical Documents
Software Download