r/Arista

Hi guys,

I hope you're doing well.

I recently received a few Arista 7060CX-32S switches that had been removed from service. When moving the switches, I noticed that something was rattling around inside.

After opening them, I found what appeared to be a roughly 3–4 mm thick grey material (graphite-like) around or underneath the ASIC heatsink that had become brittle and crumbled into small pieces.

Could this be a degraded thermal pad or gap filler?

If so, what would be the recommended procedure and material for replacing it on these units? In particular, I would be interested in knowing the correct pad thickness, thermal conductivity, and whether there are any specific compression or mounting requirements for the ASIC heatsink.

Best regards,

We've recently received several orders of FS.com optics that had the default "FS" vendor coding in them, resulting in Transceiver Unsupported errors on our switches. Assuming this occurred in error, we reached out to our account manager, who to our surprise confirmed that they are no longer coding/configuring transceivers, and customers will need to do this themselves. Has anyone else encountered this? Here's the email from our Rep:

>There has indeed been a recent change in our coding process. Starting June 6, FS began gradually transitioning certain compatible optical modules to a new custom coding mechanism, including our Arista-compatible modules. The main difference from the previous coding is the Vendor Name information. The modules are now shipped with the default FS vendor coding, rather than being pre-coded specifically as Arista. To ensure the modules can be properly recognized and used in your Arista environment, there are two possible approaches:

>Option 1 – Configure third-party transceiver compatibility on the switch

>If you have a larger quantity of optics, we recommend this approach as it avoids having to reconfigure the modules one by one. You can enable third-party transceiver support through the switch CLI.

>

>Option 2 – Reconfigure the optics through FS BOX

>If changing the switch configuration is not preferred, you can use the Online Configuration feature on your FS BOX to change the Vendor Name from “FS” to “Arista” on the optics individually.

>We understand that the second option can be inconvenient when dealing with a large number of modules, so Option 1 may be more practical for your environment.

>Please let me know which approach works better for your setup. If needed, we can also help you with the configuration steps.

Hi, Arista suggests "ebgp-multihop 3" (TTL 4) in a L3LS setup. However I cannot find any situation where a TTL of 4 is needed. Even with an isolated leaf of a MLAG pair "ebgp-multihop 1" for the overlay peering is enough to come up across the peering-link (to the spines).

I'm currently studying for Data Center - Engineering - Track where the tutor said ebgp-multihop 2 is acutally required, however ebgp-multihop 3 is suggested in case of some special L3 setups like just to be safe (does not has any downsides to set 3).

But why is ebgp-multihop 2 even needed?

Does anyone know the easiest way to get access to Arista Test Drive labs? I found these lab guides, and would like to try them out.

https://labguides.testdrive.arista.com/2026.2/