FortiSwitch-5003A system
FortiSwitch-5003A and 5003 Fabric and Base Backplane Communications Guide
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FortiSwitch-5003A system
The FortiSwitch-5003A board provides 10/1-gigabit fabric backplane channel
layer-2 switching and 1-gigabit base backplane channel layer-2 switching in a
dual star architecture for the FortiGate-5140 and FortiGate-5050 chassis. The
FortiSwitch-5003A board provides a total capacity of 200 Gigabits per second
(Gbps) throughput.
The FortiGate-5140 chassis is a 14-slot ATCA chassis and the FortiGate-5050
chassis is a 5-slot ATCA chassis. In both chassis the FortiSwitch-5003A board is
installed in the first and second hub/switch fabric slots. For most versions of the
FortiGate-5140 and 5050 chassis the hub/switch fabric slots are slots 1 and 2. For
more information about these chassis see the FortiGate-5140 Chassis Guide and
the FortiGate-5140 Chassis Guide.
You can use the FortiSwitch-5003A board for fabric and base backplane layer-2
switching for FortiGate-5000 boards installed in slots 3 and up in FortiGate-5140
and FortiGate-5050 chassis. Usually you would use the base channel for
management traffic (for example, HA heartbeat traffic) and the fabric channel for
data traffic. FortiSwitch-5003A boards can be used for fabric and base backplane
layer-2 switching within a single chassis and between multiple chassis.
The FortiSwitch-5003A system also supports 802.3ad static mode layer-2 link
aggregation, 802.1q VLANs, and 802.1s Multi-Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP) for
the fabric channels. You can use these features to configure link aggregation and
support redundant FortiSwitch-5003A switch configurations to distribute traffic to
multiple FortiGate-5000 boards. The FortiGate-5000 boards must operate in
Transparent mode, all are managed separately and all must have the same
configuration.
A FortiSwitch-5003A board in hub/switch fabric slot 1 provides communications
on fabric channel 1 and base channel 1. A FortiSwitch-5003A board in hub/switch
fabric slot 2 provides communications on fabric channel 2 and base channel 2. If
your chassis includes one FortiSwitch-5003A board you can install it in hub/switch
fabric slot 1 or 2 and configure the FortiGate-5000 boards installed in the chassis
to use the correct fabric and base backplane interfaces.
For a complete 10-gigabit fabric backplane solution you must install
FortiGate-5000 hardware that supports 10-gigabit connections. For example, a
FortiGate-5001A board combined with a FortiGate-RTM-XB2 module provides
two 10-gigabit fabric interfaces. You can install the FortiGate-5001A boards in
chassis slots 3 and up and FortiGate-RTM-XB2 modules in the corresponding
RTM slots on the back of the chassis.
The FortiSwitch-5003A board includes the following features:
• One 1-gigabit base backplane channel for layer-2 base backplane switching
between FortiGate-5000 boards installed in the same chassis as the
FortiSwitch-5003A
• One 10/1-gigabit fabric backplane channel for layer-2 fabric backplane
switching between FortiGate-5000 boards installed in the same chassis as the
FortiSwitch-5003A
• Two front panel base backplane one-gigabit copper gigabit interfaces (B1 and
B2) that connect to the base backplane channel