Arista DCS-7050SX3-48C8C-R — 48×10G SFP+ Leaf Switch with Enhanced Memory and Rear-to-Front Airflow
TheÂ
Arista DCS-7050SX3-48C8C-RÂ is a 1RU, 48-port 10GbE SFP+ data center leaf switch, purpose-built for environments with high-density 10G server connections. It deliversÂ
1.28 Tbps non-blocking throughput,Â
800 ns cut-through latency, andÂ
32 MB shared packet buffer with Dynamic Buffer Allocation. The “
C” variant doubles system memory toÂ
16 GB DRAMÂ and increases flash storage toÂ
32 GB — ideal for deployments requiring larger routing tables, state management, or telemetry buffering. Eight 100G QSFP100 uplinks allow flexible multi-speed aggregation to spine or WAN. The 48C8C supports VXLAN, EVPN, MLAG, 128-way ECMP, and the full Arista EOS automation ecosystem. The “
-R” suffix denotesÂ
rear-to-front (reverse) airflow, ideal for data centers and labs with reverse thermal design where cool air enters from the rear. For front-to-rear airflow, see theÂ
DCS-7050SX3-48C8C-F.
Key Specifications
- Ports: 48 × 10GbE SFP+ + 8 × 100GbE QSFP100 uplinks
- Throughput:Â 1.28 Tbps non-blocking (2.56 Tbps full-duplex)
- Forwarding Rate:Â 1 Bpps
- Latency:Â 800 ns cut-through
- Packet Buffer:Â 32 MB shared with Dynamic Buffer Allocation
- ECMP:Â 128-way, 1K groups
- CPU/Memory:Â Quad-Core x86, 16 GB DRAM, 32 GB Flash (enhanced C variant)
- Form Factor: 1RU — 44 × 4.4 × 46.8 cm (17.3 × 1.75 × 18.4 in)
- Weight:Â 9.45 kg (21 lbs)
- Power:Â 105W typical / 259W max; dual redundant PSUs (1+1 redundancy)
- Cooling: Rear-to-front airflow; 2 × hot-swappable fan modules (1+1 redundancy)
- Minimum EOS: 4.30.4 — LIC-FIX-1
What the “C” Means
TheÂ
48C8C variant enhances the standard 48C8 with doubled system memory: 16 GB DRAM (vs. 8 GB) and quadrupled flash storage: 32 GB (vs. 8 GB). All other specifications—port counts, throughput, latency, form factor, and supported speeds—remain identical to the standard 48C8. This memory upgrade accommodates larger routing tables, deeper state caching for stateful services, and increased telemetry buffering in large-scale or multi-tenant deployments. The 48C8C requires a minimum ofÂ
EOS 4.30.4, compared to 4.24.0 for the standard 48C8.
Port Configuration
The 48C8C is optimized forÂ
10G server leaf connectivity with high-capacity spine uplinks:
- 48 × 10GbE SFP+: Server-facing ports; native 10G only (SFP+, max 10 Gbps per port; no 25G breakout capability)
- 8 × 100GbE QSFP100: Uplink ports for spine interconnect or WAN aggregation; support speeds up to 100G native
- Max 100GbE:Â 8 ports (native uplinks)
- Max 50GbE:Â 16 ports (via QSFP breakout optics)
- Max 40GbE:Â 8 ports (via QSFP breakout optics)
- Max 10GbE:Â 64 ports (all SFP+ ports at full rate)
- Max 1GbE:Â 48 ports (SFP+ ports can negotiate down to 1G)
Deployment Scenarios
10G Server Leaf in Leaf-Spine Fabrics
- 48 × 10G SFP+ ports serve high-density server farms with 10G NICs; ideal for hyper-converged infrastructure, Kubernetes clusters, and private cloud environments
- 8 × 100G uplinks provide 800 Gbps spine aggregate bandwidth — sufficient for 16:1 oversubscription in leaf-spine topologies
- 128-way ECMP with Dynamic Load Balancing distributes traffic across all 8 uplinks for optimal utilization
- MLAG with 64-port maximum enables active/active dual-homed servers with no single point of failure
Campus and Enterprise Core
- Supports access-layer aggregation in three-tier campus networks with 10G edge links and 100G uplinks to distribution/core
- 16 GB DRAM and 32 GB flash accommodate large VRF tables, policy routing, and IPv6 deployments
- Redundant PSU and fan modules with 1+1 hot-swap ensure high availability for critical aggregation points
- OSPF, IS-IS, and BGP with 128-way ECMP provide fast failover and multi-path routing across campus cores
Mixed-Speed Migration
- Eight 100G QSFP100 uplinks support flexible aggregation: run native 100G, break out to 50G (2 × 50G per port), or 40G (via legacy optics) without replacing the switch
- 48 SFP+ ports remain fixed at 10G—no breakout capability, but ideal for stable 10G server deployments
- Hitless speed negotiation on QSFP100 uplinks enables gradual spine upgrades from 40G to 100G without downtime
Monitoring and Analytics
- 16 GB DRAM and 32 GB flash enable deep packet buffering for SPAN/mirroring and NetFlow export at line rate
- Advanced Event Management (AEM) programmatic alerts triggered by counters, syslog patterns, or telemetry thresholds
- LANZ (Latency Analyzer) with 800 ns latency measurement supports real-time queue depth monitoring on all 56 ports
- sFlow and gNMI streaming telemetry for continuous traffic characterization and anomaly detection
Storage Networking and NAS
- Eight 100G uplinks support high-throughput storage appliances and NAS systems requiring aggregated bandwidth
- 32 MB shared buffer with Dynamic Buffer Allocation handles bursty storage I/O patterns (CIFS/NFS read/write storms)
- VXLAN and EVPN enable multi-tenant storage isolation for shared infrastructure or managed service environments
- QoS with PFC and ECN protects storage traffic from congestion during simultaneous workloads
Port Speeds and Configuration
The 48C8C combines fixed 10G server ports with flexible 100G uplink ports:
- 10GbE: 48 ports — native SFP+ (no breakout); ports auto-negotiate down to 1G for legacy hardware
- 100GbE: 8 ports — native QSFP100 uplinks
- 50GbE: 16 ports — QSFP100 ports with 2×50G breakout optics
- 40GbE: 8 ports — QSFP100 with legacy 40G optics (QSFP-40G-SR4, LR4, etc.)
Supported optics: 100GBASE-CR4, AOC, SR4, DR, 2DR, FR, 2FR, LR4, PSM4. Full transceiver compatibility list available atÂ
arista.com/transceivers-cables.
Routing and Fabric Capabilities
- Layer 3:Â BGP, MP-BGP, OSPF, OSPFv3, IS-IS, RIPv2, VRF, BFD, PBR, PIM-SM/SSM, VRRP, VARP, Anycast RP (RFC 4610)
- Overlay:Â VXLAN and EVPN for multi-tenant overlay fabrics and seamless VM/container mobility
- Layer 2:Â 802.1w RSTP, 802.1s MSTP, RPVST+, 4096 VLAN support, Q-in-Q, jumbo frames (9216 bytes)
- Link Aggregation: 802.3ad LACP — up to 64 ports per channel, 128 groups system-wide
- Multi-Chassis LAG (MLAG):Â Up to 64 ports per MLAG for active/active redundancy across two switches
- Load Balancing:Â 128-way ECMP, Dynamic Load Balancing (DLB), and Unequal Cost Multi-Pathing (UCMP) for fine-grained traffic distribution
Table Sizes
Memory specifications apply in UFT Mode 2 (default configuration):
- MAC Addresses:Â 288K
- IPv4 Host Routes:Â 16K
- IPv4 LPM Routes (ALPM):Â 360K
- IPv6 Host Routes:Â 8K
- IPv6 LPM Routes:Â 96K
- IPv4 Multicast (S,G):Â 32K
- ACLs:Â 3K ingress / 2K egress (7K custom total)
- Spanning Tree:Â 64 instances MST or 510 instances RPVST+
- IGMP:Â 288K max with up to 16K unique multicast groups
- ECMP:Â 128-way load balancing with up to 1K ECMP groups
QoS and Lossless Ethernet
- Queues:Â Up to 8 unicast + 2 multicast per port
- Classification:Â 802.1p and DSCP-based classification and remarking
- Scheduling:Â Strict priority and Weighted Round Robin (WRR)
- Congestion Control:Â Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) and Priority Flow Control (PFC)
- DCB:Â DCBX and 802.1Qaz ETS for lossless Ethernet and RoCEv2 RDMA support
- Shaping:Â Per-port traffic shaping and rate limiting with ACL-based policing
Telemetry and Monitoring
- LANZ (Latency Analyzer):Â Real-time per-port queue depth and microburst detection with configurable congestion thresholds
- sFlow:Â Packet sampling for flow-level analysis and capacity planning
- AEM (Advanced Event Management):Â Programmable event-driven alerting and automation via CLI Scheduler, Event Manager, and Event Monitor
- Streaming Telemetry:Â GPB-encoded export via gNMI/gRPC to third-party collectors; support for in-band telemetry (INT, GREEN-T)
- Port Mirroring:Â 8 active SPAN sessions with L2/L3/L4 filtering, port channel source and destination, mirror-to-CPU
- IEEE 1588v2 PTP:Â Transparent Clock and Boundary Clock for precision time synchronization
- Traffic Statistics:Â Per-port and per-queue polling as low as 100 ms; optional fast polling at 1 ms intervals
Automation and EOS
- Operating System: Arista EOS — 64-bit, modular, Linux-based with in-memory state sharing via Sysdb
- CloudVision:Â Centralized management, change control, ZTP, and topology visualization
- APIs:Â JSON-RPC eAPI, OpenConfig, and gNMI/gRPC for programmatic control
- Scripting:Â Native Python, C++, and Bash via Linux shell; RPM support and custom kernel modules
- ZTP:Â Zero-Touch Provisioning for automated day-0 deployment and configuration
- Smart System Upgrade (SSU):Â In-service software upgrades with minimal traffic disruption
Security
- ACLs:Â IPv4/IPv6 ingress and egress at L2/L3/L4 with drop logging and per-ACL counters
- Control Plane Protection (CoPP):Â Rate-limiting of CPU-destined traffic
- Authentication:Â TACACS+, RADIUS, SSHv2, and AAA
- RBAC:Â Role-based access control with custom privilege levels
- Secure Boot:Â Digitally signed EOS images with secure image verification
- Layer 2 Security:Â MAC Security, DHCP relay and snooping, Service ACLs
Reliability and Lifecycle Management
- Stateful Fault Repair (SFR):Â Automatic recovery from software faults without data plane impact
- Stateful Fault Containment (SFC):Â Fault isolation to prevent cascading failures
- Smart System Upgrade (SSU):Â In-service software upgrades with minimal disruption
- Live Software Patching:Â Hot-patch capability for critical fixes without reboot
- Redundancy: 1+1 hot-swappable PSUs and 2 × hot-swappable fan modules; color-coded for easy identification
Similar Arista Models to Consider
- DCS-7050SX3-48C8C-F:Â Front-to-rear airflow variant of this switch. Electrically and functionally identical; airflow direction only.
- DCS-7050SX3-48C8-R:Â Standard memory variant with 8 GB DRAM and 8 GB flash instead of 16 GB DRAM and 32 GB. Identical port configuration and performance; requires EOS 4.24.0+.
- DCS-7050SX3-48YC8C-R: 25G SFP25 variant with same 16 GB DRAM and 32 GB flash memory upgrade as the 48C8C. Supports 48 × 25G server ports instead of 10G; 8 × 100G QSFP100 uplinks identical to 48C8C.
- DCS-7060CX-32S-F:Â 32-port 100G QSFP spine switch for pairing with SX3 leaf switches; 6.4 Tbps throughput; optimal for leaf-spine topologies where 48C8C serves as leaf.
Related Resources
Summary
TheÂ
Arista DCS-7050SX3-48C8C-RÂ is a 1RU, 48-port 10GbE SFP+ data center leaf switch deliveringÂ
1.28 Tbps non-blocking throughput,Â
800 ns cut-through latency, andÂ
32 MB shared packet buffer with Dynamic Buffer Allocation. The “
C” variant includes enhanced memory—
16 GB DRAMÂ andÂ
32 GB flash—ideal for large routing tables, state caching, and telemetry. Eight 100G QSFP100 uplinks enable flexible aggregation to spine or WAN. It supports VXLAN, EVPN, MLAG, 128-way ECMP, Dynamic Load Balancing, and the full Arista EOS automation stack including CloudVision, eAPI, and Zero-Touch Provisioning. Rear-to-front airflow with redundant fans and power supplies. Available from BrightStar Systems fully tested, reset to factory defaults, and backed by a 1-year in-house warranty.
