Arista Warrior, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6. Arista Products

The Arista product portfolio can seem a little overwhelming at first because many of the switches look similar and there are some features and software products that have names that don’t make their function immediately obvious, but after you dig in, you’ll realize why each product exists and how you might use it in your own networks. Since the first edition of Arista Warrior was published, Arista has expanded with more models and a variety of software-only solutions that I cover here, as well.

Switches

Arista now has so many switches that the marketing material has changed because putting them all onto a single image would mean that each switch would be too small to see well. In the first edition of this book, I put in a picture and a brief summary of each current model, but I’ve moved away from that approach in this edition.

Amusing Digression

As a fun aside, when the first edition of this book was ready, Arista invited me to be a guest speaker at one of its Customer Exchange events in Santa Clara, California. Remember, I was not yet an employee, so I was pretty excited to learn that I would be following none other than Silicon Valley visionary Andy Bechtolsheim. After I accidentally stepped on his toes (yes, really), he got up to speak, where he proceeded to announce a new set of switches to raucous applause. When he was done, I got up and had to explain how my cool new book, which was to hit shelves in mere days, was just made obsolete by Andy. ...