Abstract

New H3C Technologies commissioned Tolly to evaluate the performance and feature set of the H3C S9855 series data center switches. The main focus of the project was to validate line-rate forwarding, energy efficiency, overlay and routing capabilities, operations and maintenance features, and data-center-specific lossless Ethernet functions across the S9855 family for core and aggregation deployment in modern data centers.  

The report covers the H3C S9855 series, including the S9855-24B8D, S9855-32D, S9855-40B, and S9855-48CD8D. For performance testing, Tolly used the S9855-24B8D model with 24 x 200GE and 8 x 400GE ports. In RFC2544 throughput testing with Spirent TestCenter, the switch delivered 100% Layer 2 line-rate throughput for frame sizes of 360 bytes and above across both the 200GE and 400GE ports in dual-snake topology, with zero frame loss. This corresponds to 8Tbps of switching throughput. Tolly also measured power consumption using the ATIS methodology and calculated an ATIS weighted power value of 314.4W, producing a TEER of 25.45Gbps per watt.  

Feature validation emphasized modern data center networking. Tolly verified VXLAN Layer 2 and Layer 3 connectivity, IPv6 endpoints over IPv4 VXLAN, connectivity between VXLAN and non-VXLAN VLAN networks, EVPN VXLAN with distributed gateways, centralized VXLAN Layer 3 gateway support, and VXLAN DCI. The platform supported 8,191 IPv4 VXLAN tunnels. Routing support included OSPF, IS-IS, and BGP for IPv4, plus OSPFv3, IS-IS for IPv6, and BGP4+ for IPv6, as well as dual-stack routing, OSPF graceful restart, ECMP, traffic-matrix forwarding, and enhanced ECMP behavior. The switch also supported MPLS VPWS, VPLS, and L3VPN, along with MCE-VRF and multiple VPN routing protocols.  

The report also highlights operations and AI-fabric features. Tolly verified gRPC-based Telemetry, INT, Telemetry Stream, Mirror on Drop, Ansible, NETCONF, SNMP, OpenFlow, ZTP, ERSPAN, RSPAN, and NetStream. Capacity validation showed support for 224,692 MAC addresses, 28,669 ARP entries with different MAC addresses or 163,000 with the same MAC, 28,000 ND entries with different MAC addresses or 81,000 with the same MAC, and 980,000 routes in both IPv4 and IPv6 FIBs. Additional validated features included PFC deadlock prevention, mice-elephant flow QoS, DCBX, PFC, ECN, RoCE lossless Ethernet with AI ECN and one-click PFC, plus fan and power redundancy with no packet loss during module removal. Overall, the report presents the H3C S9855 series as a high-density, feature-rich data center switch family with full line-rate forwarding and broad support for modern overlay, MPLS, automation, and lossless Ethernet environments.  

The following switches were tested:

• H3C S9855-24B8D — S9855 series data center switch model used for the throughput and power-efficiency tests, with 24 x 200GE and 8 x 400GE ports.  
• H3C S9855-32D — High-density S9855 series data center switch model included in the validated product family.  
• H3C S9855-40B — S9855 series data center switch model included in the report’s validated switch lineup.  
• H3C S9855-48CD8D — Higher-density S9855 series data center switch model included in the validated family.  
• H3C S12500 series core switches — Referenced as the upstream core switches that the S9855 can connect to over 400GE uplinks in data center core and aggregation deployments.