On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 05:59:41PM -0500, Will Dennis wrote: > Careful... The "regular" Dell PowerConnect switches (35xx, 55xx, 80xx > etc.) != Dell Force10. The PowerConnect line is made of "merchant > silicon" (Broadcomm, SuperMicro reference, etc.) and is nowhere near the > performance or reliability of the Force10 line. Of course, it doesn't > cost Force10 money either... The cheapest Force10 switch I see on the > Dell site we use (Dell Premier) is $4,116 for a Force10 S25N > (24x10/100/1000 copper, 4xSFP.) We do use the PowerConnect line in some > non-critical applications (mostly research clusters.) The are fine for > the price.
That's funny; on ebay, the force10 stuff is about the cheapest you can go. you can get 24 port 10G (!) force10 switches on ebay for $2200 (4x XFP ports and 20 cx4 ports) I have not ordered any of these, though I'm considering it. I also have 2x SA-01-GE48T switches that I got for $300 on ebay. Another $400 and you can put in 2 10G capable xfp ports in back (I think; I have not tried.) On the other hand, the force10 documentation is behind a paywall. If you call force10 and ask to pay for firmware updates or even just access to the documentation and tell them it is a used switch, they act like you told them you stole it. Mine are not in production yet, in part because I am uncomfortable with the fact that I don't have firmware, but mostly because I don't have the documentation. I'm interested to hear that force10 is considered good, when they appear to be the cheapest available used switches of their speed on ebay. I wonder if the price reflects the difficulty of obtaining documentation. I do need to upgrade my switching systems to 10G; I'm currently waffling between this force10 gear and HP Procurve chassis switches, for which I can get firmware and documentation, but for which I have to pay rather more. (In my price range, it's used either way.) _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
