Experience with the Dell PowerConnect 8024F - compare to the Cisco Nexus 5010
Does anyone have any experience with the Dell PowerConnect 8024F 10-gig switch that they'd be willing to share? How does it perform? How reliable is it? My experiences with the Dell switches have been less than favorable to this point, but I am willing to concede that some of that may be colored by my Cisco bias. Would you trust this Dell switch in a high-performance computing environment, where the ability to move data for sustained durations at rates close to line speed is paramount, along with high-reliability/high-availability? Any feedback is welcomed. -- To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy
Hi, On Fri, 2010-06-18 at 11:57 -0400, Steven Fischer wrote:
Does anyone have any experience with the Dell PowerConnect 8024F 10-gig switch that they'd be willing to share? How does it perform? How reliable is it? My experiences with the Dell switches have been less than favorable to this point, but I am willing to concede that some of that may be colored by my Cisco bias. Would you trust this Dell switch in a high-performance computing environment, where the ability to move data for sustained durations at rates close to line speed is paramount, along with high-reliability/high-availability?
Any feedback is welcomed.
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. Foundry's firmwares have some bugs though as far as SNMP goes. For example, our traffic utilization graphs start missing data after about 120 days and we have to reboot them. This happens on both actual Foundry gear and the rebranded Dell stuff. If you're just using the switches as an interconnect (MPI?), this probably isn't a big deal for you. I have heard that newer firmware fixes that problem, but we haven't had time to test out upgrading so it hasn't been done yet. The Nexus switch line is also very good, but too expensive for my blood. I have to eat... The management is very well done, but the Nexus OS is feature-lacking in comparison to traditional Cisco IOS. So, right now, the Foundry gear is probably a better option. William
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). ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
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
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.
Is there any evidence that this happens within a model? I find it hard to believe. I can see differences from one model to the next, but from one batch to the next? When they went from the 5224 to the 5324, I believe that was a mfr changeout, but it was accompanied by a new model number. I hear your paranoia though. ;-) By the way, I know that for a while, Foundry wasn't building their own low-end switches, which was how that Foundry 24G model came to be... are they still doing that, or did they start making their own gear again? I've had some old FWS24's for maybe 15 years and the one thing I can say is that the stuff just doesn't seem to fail, even though I don't really have a good use for them anymore. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
participants (4)
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Joe Greco -
Seth Mattinen -
Steven Fischer -
William Pitcock