Introduction to HP ProCurve 2910al Switch Series - fiberopticnetworking/vocanoman GitHub Wiki

As telecom industry develops rapidly, the size of data center becomes larger and the data transmission speed becomes higher. And many data centers have moved to 40G and 100G. For small and middle size business, 10gb switch occupies a dominant market. HP switch, characterized by its high quality and low price, is popular with small data center network designers. This article will give an introduction to HP ProCurve 2910al Switch Series.

The HP ProCurve 2910al Switch Series consists of four 10gb ethernet switches, which are HP ProCurve 2910al-24G switch, HP ProCurve 2910al-24G-PoE+ switch, HP ProCurve 2910al-48G switch and HP ProCurve 2910al-48G-PoE+ switch. These switches can be deployed at enterprise edge and remote branch offices, converged networks, and data center top of rack. They are featured with IPv6 host which allows the switches to be managed and developed at the edge of IPv6 networks. Designed with up to four optional and flexible 10G ports (CX4 and/or SFP+), they can provide 10G connectivity. They are high-performance Gigabit access switches which can cost-effective and scalable solution for your network deployment. Here is a figure of HP ProCurve 2910al Switch Series for you.

Both HP ProCurve 2910al-24G switch and HP ProCurve 2910al-24G-PoE+ switch have twenty 10/100/1000 ports, four dual-personality ports one RJ45 serial console port and four 10G ports. While HP ProCurve 2910al-48G switch and HP ProCurve 2910al-48G-PoE+ switch have forty-four 10/100/1000 ports, four dual-personality ports one RJ45 serial console port and four 10G ports. With different port number, their switching capacities are different: 128 Gbps switching fabric with up to 95 Mpps for 24 port switch and 176 Gbps switching fabric with up to 131 Mpps for 48 port switch. For application in data center, different ports on the switch are connected with corresponding optical components.

• 10/100/1000 ports: All these ports have the “Auto MDIX” feature, which means you can use either straight-through or crossover twisted-pair cables to connect any network devices to the switch.
• Dual-personality ports: Each port can be used as either an RJ45 10/100/1000 port or as a mini-GBIC slot for use with mini-GBIC transceivers. By default, the RJ45 connectors are enabled. If a mini-GBIC is installed in a slot, it is enabled and the associated RJ45 connector is disabled and cannot be used. If the mini-GBIC is removed, the associated RJ45 port is automatically re-enabled.
• 10G ports: These ports provide connectivity for 10G speed though either copper or fiber optic media (CX4 and/or SFP+).
• For PoE+ switch, the RJ45 connector also supplies PoE+ power until a mini-GBIC is installed. That means the PoE+ power is turned off when a mini-GBIC is plugged in.

With 10/100/1000 ports, HP ProCurve 2910al Switch Series can be used for 1G to 1G connection. Just respectively plug two SFP transceiver modules into 1G ports on two switches, then connect the two SFP transceiver modules with a fiber optic cable. Besides, 10G to 10G connection can be accomplished by using 10G DAC cable. Therefore, it is very simply to utilize HP ProCurve 2910al Switch Series in data center. The following table shows supported fiber optic transceiver, optical fiber cable for HP ProCurve 2910al Switch Series.

In addition to providing cost-effective solution for small size business, a lifetime warranty offered by HP makes HP ProCurve 2910al Switch Series particularly a great choice. For transceiver and cable, you can go to FS.COM, which provides high quality compatible SFP, SFP+ transceiver, 10G SFP+ DAC cable and optical cable.