Case Study: European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) achieves high-performance, resilient supercomputing network with Arista Networks

Arista Selected for ECMWF Critical and Extensible Network Infrastructure

The European Centre for Medium‑Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an intergovernmental organisation that produces twice‑daily global numerical weather forecasts and maintains the world’s largest meteorological data archive. As ECMWF upgraded its supercomputing clusters, it needed to ensure the underlying network would not become a bottleneck for massive data offload, post‑processing and continuous 24/7 operations.

ECMWF selected Arista 7500‑E switches and Arista EOS to deliver a high‑performance, extensible network. Features such as Multi‑Chassis Link Aggregation with Virtual ARP, custom on‑switch EOS scripting for transparent supercomputer node failover, and multi‑process state sharing for incremental software updates provided low latency, high availability and improved uptime—enabling resilient 24/7 operation and fast access to ECMWF’s meteorological archive.

ECMWF

Oliver Gorwits

Head of Networks & Computer Security, ECMWF