Arista Networks was founded in 2004 by Andy Bechtolsheim - Sun Microsystems co-founder and former Cisco executive. The company is headed by Jayshree Ullal, a long-time networking industry executive who previously ran the $10 billion Data Center and Switching business at Cisco.

Arista's mission is to deliver networking products that address emerging IT architectures, including:

• Server virtualization

• Cloud computing

• Network-attached storage (NAS) and iSCSI clusters

• High Performance Computing (HPC)

Arista has developed a new network switch architecture and network design principles to address these new environments within a framework we term cloud networking. The highlights are:

• Cost/performance breakthrough enabling cost-effective non-blocking 10 Gbps Ethernet infrastructures to handle mobile, bursty workloads with predictable throughput and very low latency

• Robustness with Arista's Extensible Operating System (EOS), which permits In-Service Software Upgrades (ISSU) and self-healing operation via Stateful Fault Repair (SFR)

• Operational simplicity delivered through a single software image with consistent features across our entire range of products, a consistent management interface across virtual and physical networks, and 10GBASE-T technology which enables the use of standard cables

• High Performance Computing (HPC)

The Arista 7XXX series of 1/10 Gbps Ethernet Layer 2/3/4 switching products are designed for high availability, with redundant, hot-swappable fans and power supplies. Our products feature:

• The lowest price/port on the market (less than half that of the market average selling price)

• Highest availability (not one switch has crashed since we began shipments in mid-2008)

• Non-blocking wire-speed throughput on every port (total throughput of 960 Gbps)

• The lowest switch latency, ranging from 600 nanoseconds to 1.2 microseconds

• Highest port density per RU (rack unit) on the market (at 48 10GbE ports)

• Support for 10GBASE-T

• Support for virtualized environments with vEOS (permits the migration of virtual workloads across the physical network with network policy intact)