On 6/18/2010 13:55, Joe Greco wrote:
Dell switches are usually Foundry gear relabeled, so it should be ok. We are using Dell switches alongside actual Foundry gear in a cloud environment and have had no problems.
Maybe I haven't looked recently enough, but that wasn't quite the way it worked last time I checked.
For example, Accton manufactured the ES4624. Dell sold this as the PowerConnect 5224, SMC sold this as the 8624T, Foundry sold this as the EdgeIron 24G, 3Com sold this as the 3824, etc.
I've picked that older example simply due to the sheer number of manufacturers doing this that I had correlated at one point, but it was clearly NOT a Foundry switch that got rebadged as the 5224.
If this has changed, it suggests good things about Dell's switches, but my last serious look at Dell was where I was rapidly told a bunch of conflicting information about the 6224, only the worst of which turned out to be true (only supports a handful of IPv6 routes).
There's also another factor: you may not have any idea whose rebranded switch you're getting when you buy a Dell switch. Maybe it's Foundry in batch X, but it might not be in batch Y. ~Seth