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Brocade ICX Series (cheap & powerful 10gbE/40gbE switching)

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Jacob M

New Member
Feb 16, 2020
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Austin
Thank you for the quick response. So the breakouts are only 4x 10gbe.
"2 of them are 40gbE only ports - for your freenas, hypervisors, whatever. The other 2 are 4x 10gbE breakout (each) only:" i thank i read this a couple of times and missed it thank you!!
 
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Roelf Zomerman

Active Member
Jan 10, 2019
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blog.azureinfra.com
95f might be pushing it, even with an exhaust fan I'm pretty confident your attic will be well above that, but that said you could give it a try, especially if days like that are rare. if it gets too hot it'll shut itself down, I would just keep an eye on the temps
For me, at at around 43C (110F) it is still operational with 3 fans continuously.. (medium speed)
 

PGlover

Active Member
Nov 8, 2014
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So one of my ICX-6610 died on me this weekend. When I plug the power supply in, the fan is running hard but there are no lights on the front of the unit. The fan module in the back does not come on. There is no response from the serial port either. I plan to open up the case on the unit this week. Anything I should look out for? I was thinking about buying a "Parts Only" unit on Ebay to swap parts.
 

BecauseScience

New Member
Feb 3, 2016
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95f might be pushing it, even with an exhaust fan I'm pretty confident your attic will be well above that, but that said you could give it a try, especially if days like that are rare. if it gets too hot it'll shut itself down, I would just keep an eye on the temps
Good to know. Looks like we get an average of eight days per year over 90F. Sounds like it's worth a try.

For me, at at around 43C (110F) it is still operational with 3 fans continuously.. (medium speed)
Which model?
 

Dinnerb0ne

New Member
Feb 17, 2020
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Hey, got this switch as a gift from a relative to dive into networking. This guide helped me a lot, but I need to learn more about vlan & trunking, any good resources?
 

PGlover

Active Member
Nov 8, 2014
499
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So one of my ICX-6610 died on me this weekend. When I plug the power supply in, the fan is running hard but there are no lights on the front of the unit. The fan module in the back does not come on. There is no response from the serial port either. I plan to open up the case on the unit this week. Anything I should look out for? I was thinking about buying a "Parts Only" unit on Ebay to swap parts.
I purchased this unit really cheap today for parts. If the POE module is the only issue wrong with this unit on Ebay, I should be able swap the one I have into this unit. Does anyone has a schematic of the internal parts for the ICX-6610?

Brocade ICX6610-48P-PE 48x gbE Ports POE+ Dual AC Switch *Read Description* | eBay
 

Dinnerb0ne

New Member
Feb 17, 2020
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Facing some problems with VLAN,

I untagged 1/1/13 to 1/1/24 as VLAN 90 (IoT),
and tagged 1/1/5 to VLAN 90 (IoT)

The 1/1/5 is connected to a NIC, on a server running ESXi 6.7 to a vswitch, on which i created a portgroup of 4095 and assigned it to a vm running pfsense, where I assigned an IP of 192.168.20.1 to the LAN, and created a VLAN group with an ID of 90, and assigned it an IP of 192.168.90.1. I'm obviously able to ping them and all firewall rules have been enabled and DHCP server enabled. But when I connect any device to them, they arn't getting assigned, even static assignment isn't working.

The switch is an ICX6450
and the host is an r710
 
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UKEE

New Member
Jan 2, 2020
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Lexington, KY
you need to factory reset the switch you're introducing so it's clean, then follow brocade's docs Replacing traditional stack units

just connect it via 1 stack port to start off with until it's fully configured and running, then you can alter the stack-port config to match what you want and plug the other one in
Thanks! I'm going to swap the fans with the slower Sunon fans and then just mount and try it. If I feel that it's getting too hot or loud (from heat), I'll swap direction and see if it makes a difference. Just seemed that pushing air into the bottom and letting it rise with the hot air produced toward the vent (now at top) would have been better than pulling air in from the top. Testing will tell!

Side note: Reading the ICX6450 and ICX7250 installation manuals indicate that the preferred method of wall mount is port side down (Makes sense since the fan would now be on top). However, both have illustrations that appear to show port side up.
 

tommybackeast

Active Member
Jun 10, 2018
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I'm biased on this and I know some here have had very different experiences, but I'm really not a fan of the VDX series. The team that was responsible for them at brocade seems like they had the totally opposite outlook versus the fastiron/ICX team. Nearly everything including the ports are locked down with licenses (which I nor anyone else I know can get), the CLI is weird and does not vaguely follow cisco conventions like the ICX line, etc. They're now also owned by Extreme, so you're not gonna be able to get firmware for them. Finding someone with an Extreme support contract won't even be enough, Extreme's downloads are so locked down you'll need to find someone with that exact VDX model under contract to get access to it's firmware. They're also missing some misc l3 stuff like tunnels (VDX will do L3, but the target market was big L2 fabric, so expect some misc L3 stuff to be missing or wonky). Last time I used them they were also vendor locked on optics (again, total opposite design philosophy versus the ICX line), but this could have changed in recent firmware after they got acquired by Extreme.

The ICX7750 is a workhorse, I have a pair in NYC terminating 5 or 6 BGP sessions and serving an average of 30gbps upstream transit, never had a hiccup with them. We see about 200w power draw under this load, but this is from a metered PDU so probably not the most accurate figure. The ICX7750 also does indeed support PFC if you ever want to run FCoE etc in the future
Please note i'm a noob and only understood half of what you wrote, but isn't that ICX7750 in NYC only taking 200watts rather an amazing feat of engineering ?
 
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tommybackeast

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Jun 10, 2018
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95f might be pushing it, even with an exhaust fan I'm pretty confident your attic will be well above that, but that said you could give it a try, especially if days like that are rare. if it gets too hot it'll shut itself down, I would just keep an eye on the temps
the 6450 is rather quiet ; esp the 24 port non-POE

What about putting the switch in some room or closet near the attic; put a keystone plate on the wall between room/closet and attic; and run the cables down from attic that way? That way the switch itself is not in the attic.

95F outside? it's likely 100-110 then in the attic even with attic fan; esp if the attic roof faces west for afternoon sun and heat.
 
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CorvetteGS

Member
Jan 20, 2014
40
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Atlanta, GA
Been trying to work with up-n-atom on writing new values to the broadcom warpcore registers on the 7250 to alter the serdes datarate to enable 2.5gbps SFPs on the thing (the ASIC fully supports it), but they've made the broadcom shell super annoying to get at (he's made progress, though, have a whole list of ~800 hidden commands I've been meaning to publish, including the broadcom tor shell).
Hi @fohdeesha & @up-n-atom, any update on getting 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps to work? If no, was a roadblock reached that will prevent it from being possible or was it rather a lack of interest/time in making the modification? Thanks for all your great work.
 
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fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
Nov 20, 2016
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