Arista Foundations study guide
Arista Foundations · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Arista Foundations exam is an independent, third-party practice assessment for networking professionals who want to validate foundational knowledge of Arista's cloud networking portfolio. It is aimed at network engineers, data center operators, and automation-minded administrators who are starting with Arista technologies or transitioning from another vendor's switching and routing platforms. The exam is organized around four equally weighted domains: EOS and Cloud Networking Fundamentals; Data Center Leaf-Spine Architectures; CloudVision Automation and Visibility; and Routing, Observability, and Security Solutions. Each domain accounts for 25 percent of the content, so no single topic can be skipped. The Arista Foundations study guide has 4 sections and about 1,439 words.
01EOS and Cloud Networking Fundamentals
Arista EOS (Extensible Operating System) is a single-image, Linux-based network OS built around a shared state database (SysDB) that decouples protocol agents from the forwarding plane. Candidates should understand: the modular architecture (protocol agents publish to SysDB; processes subscribe rather than talk to each other directly), the difference between the control plane and data plane, and how EOS supports in-service software upgrades and rollback via a single image.
313 words, about 2 min02Data Center Leaf-Spine Architectures
Leaf-spine is a two-tier Clos fabric: every leaf connects to every spine, and spines connect only to leaves. This gives predictable, equal-cost paths between any two leaves (ECMP) and scales horizontally by adding spines (bandwidth) or leaves (ports).
299 words, about 1 min03CloudVision Automation and Visibility
CloudVision is Arista's management platform combining automation, telemetry, and change control. Candidates should understand its architecture: CloudVision Portal (CVP) as the management/UI layer, the Telemetry and provisioning components, and how switches stream state (via eAPI, gNMI, or streaming telemetry) to CloudVision.
275 words, about 1 min04Routing
Candidates must understand dynamic routing fundamentals as used in a leaf-spine fabric: OSPF and BGP, plus EVPN as a BGP address family. Know that eBGP is commonly used in the underlay (each leaf and spine in its own AS, or a shared AS with allowances) to provide ECMP and loop prevention.
552 words, about 3 min