Detail Description

Cisco 550X Series switches provide the advanced feature set that growing businesses require and that high-bandwidth applications and technologies demand. These switches can improve the availability of your critical applications, protect your business information, and optimize your network bandwidth to more effectively deliver information and support applications. The switches provide the following benefits.

High-Performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet
Cisco 550X Series switches break the barrier of 10 Gigabit Ethernet adoption by providing affordable and flexible configurations customized for the demanding network requirements of small and medium businesses.

With 10G copper ports on SG550XG switches, you can easily and cost-effectively enable 10G connections to servers and network storage devices with standard RJ45 Ethernet cable. You can also connect your SG550X access switches to the SG550XG aggregation with 10G SFP+ fiber, building a high-performance backbone to speed up the overall operation of your network.

High Reliability and Resiliency
In a growing business in which availability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is critical, you need to assure that employees and customers can always access the data and resources whenever they need. In these environments, stackable switches can play an important role in eliminating downtime and improving network resiliency. For example, if a switch within a Cisco 550X Series stack fails, another switch immediately takes over, keeping your network up and running. You can also replace individual devices in the stack without taking your network offline or affecting employee productivity.

The Cisco 550X Series is designed to deliver hardware redundancy at the lowest incremental cost. Power redundancy is delivered with the Cisco RPS2300 external RPS system. If power to the switch is lost (through loss of AC power or power supply failure), the switch will automatically, and instantaneously, obtain its power from the RPS. This switchover occurs so quickly that there is no loss in traffic or reboot of the device. A Cisco RPS2300 system can be connected to up to six 550X Series switches to provide redundancy. Cooling fan redundancy is delivered through preinstalled N+1 configuration. A switch can fully support all its capabilities for the life of the product with only N fans. If one of the fans fails, the spare fan automatically takes over, without causing any downtime.

Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+) and 60W PoE
Cisco 550X Series switches support the Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+) standard (IEEE 802.3at), providing up to 30 watts per port. The switches also support 60W PoE on selected ports to power compact switches, high-power wireless access points, or connected lighting. The power is managed in a smart fashion such that only the amount of power the endpoint needs is delivered to it and not wasted. As a result, the switches can support devices that require more power, such as 802.11ac wireless access points, video-based IP phones, surveillance cameras, and more.

Power Efficiency
The Cisco 550X Series integrates a variety of power-saving features across all models, providing the industry’s most extensive energy-efficient switching portfolio. These switches are designed to conserve energy by optimizing power use, which helps protects the environment and reduce your energy costs. They provide an eco-friendly network solution without compromising performance. Cisco 550X Series switches feature:

• Support for the Energy Efficient Ethernet (IEEE 802.3az) standard, which reduces energy consumption by monitoring the amount of traffic on an active link and putting the link into a sleep state during quiet periods
• The latest application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), which use low-power 28- or 40-nanometer technology and low-power, high-performance ARM CPUs
• Automatic power shutoff on ports when a link is down
• LEDs that can be turned off to save power
• Embedded intelligence to adjust signal strength based on the length of the connecting cable
• Smart fans in which fan speed is automatically adjusted according to switch temperature to decrease acoustic noise and save power

Advanced Stacking
Some switches claim to support stacking but in practice support only “clustering,” meaning that each switch must still be managed and configured individually. Cisco 550X Series switches provide true stacking capability, allowing you to configure, manage, and troubleshoot all switches in a stack as a single unit, with a single IP address for up to a maximum of 400 Ethernet ports.

A true stack delivers a unified data and control plane, in addition to management plane, providing flexibility, scalability, and ease of use because the stack of units operates as a single entity constituting all the ports of the stack members. This capability can radically reduce complexity in a growing network environment while improving the resiliency and availability of network applications. True stacking also provides other cost savings and administrative benefits through features such as cross-stack QoS, VLANs, LAGs, and port mirroring, which clustered switches cannot support.

Easy Deployment and Use
Cisco 550X Series switches are designed to be easy to use and manage by small and medium businesses, commercial customers, or the partners that serve them. Features include:

• Simple and advanced mode graphic user interfaces reduce the time required to deploy, troubleshoot, and manage the network and allow you to support sophisticated capabilities without increasing IT head count.
• Configuration wizards simplify the most common configuration tasks and provide the ultimate tool for anyone to easily set up and manage the network.
• The switches also support Textview, a full command-line interface (CLI) option for customers or partners that prefer it.
• The USB port on the switch enables easy image and configuration transfer for faster deployment or upgrade.
• Using Auto Smart ports intelligence, the switch can detect a network device connected to any port and automatically configure the optimal security, quality of service (QoS), and availability on that port.
• Cisco Discovery Protocol discovers Cisco devices and allows devices to share critical configuration information, simplifying network setup and integration.
• Support for Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) allows you to set up and manage your switches and other Cisco devices remotely from a network management station, improving IT workflow and mass configurations.
• The Cisco FindIT utility, which works through a simple toolbar on the user’s web browser, discovers Cisco devices in the network and displays basic information, such as serial numbers and IP addresses, to aid in configuration and deployment.