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

[fohdeesha]

Well yes, managed L2 was of my interest.
L3 is just unneccesary for me at the current moment.
If a serial cable is special, then you must be quite young

yeah I was gunna say, if the 5 minute setup guide for these things is a "complex setup" he probably hasn't used much networking equipment heh. not to mention I don't think keeping a copy of tftpd32.exe somewhere and double clicking it once a year is a "pain in the butt", but that's just me (and that's only if you want to keep updating the thing to bleeding edge firmware)

 

[fohdeesha]

Could you use the 6450-24P as a simple L2 switch as well?

to actually answer your question, that's what 90% of the users in this giant thread are doing, and that's exactly the state the switch will operate in after following the quick config guide in the OP. Then if you ever want the extra L2+ or L3 features, they're there ready to go

 

[klui]

Well yes, managed L2 was of my interest.
L3 is just unneccesary for me at the current moment.
If a serial cable is special, then you must be quite young

Unlike Mikrotik switches you don't need switch-only FW for vendors like Brocade because the routing is limited. But I've read they will soon have routing code going through ASICs though I don't know when or even if they're doing it already.

 

[nerdalertdk]

Unlike Mikrotik switches you don't need switch-only FW for vendors like Brocade because the routing is limited. But I've read they will soon have routing code going through ASICs though I don't know when or even if they're doing it already.

What ?
The bigger versions can do quite the advanced routing

static
RIP
RIPng
OSPFv2
OSPFv3
BGP

 

[eduncan911]

I am going to have to report this thread to the admins. You all are messing with people's lives.

 

[eduncan911]

Why is 7250-48P so much more desirable than 6610-48P?

I'm trying to score a 7250-48P to run as the core switch from my home but I'm encountering ridiculous prices even using offers. Meanwhile, there are loads of (relatively) cheap 6610's available. It's kind of hard to believe a multi-hundred dollar difference is down to power usage and noise. Is there some other advantage I'm missing?

Wondering if I should buy a 6610 instead and save $$$...

I ran into the same issues when getting mine as well.

- lower power consumption
- much MUCH quieter
- much newer device, not EOL

You can also pickup ICX7450-48Ps cheaper than the ICX7250-48P for some reason. The 7450s have the newer PoH and a couple 40G ports, along with 4x 10G ports. They are louder though and have a higher consumption with the single PSU, and the duals use even more power.

Btw, I tried to message you but your profile is set to private or something. I will be selling my ICX7250-48P and ICX7250-48 (non-POE) soon. Just PM me.

 

[eduncan911]

Anyone have a single REV B psu of an ICX6610 that they want to trade for 2x REV A units (or more)? And maybe even a couple of rear fan units thrown in?

 

[BecauseScience]

What? Did I miss something?
I used a standard console cable (db9 to rj45) that came with my arista switch and it worked...

Someone asking if these switches can be used as "simple" L2 switches doesn't have a db9 to rj45 from their other enterprise switch lying around. It's a "new" cable for those of us whose experience is limited to dumb L2 switches.

Well yes, managed L2 was of my interest.
L3 is just unneccesary for me at the current moment.
If a serial cable is special, then you must be quite young

Nope, old fart. In my day, serial cables were DB25 or DB9 only. This is my first exposure to serial on an RJ45 connector, let alone serial on a mini USB as required for the 7250.

yeah I was gunna say, if the 5 minute setup guide for these things is a "complex setup" he probably hasn't used much networking equipment heh.

That's correct and I assume that someone asking if these can be used as "simple" L2 switches would have a similar experience level.

not to mention I don't think keeping a copy of tftpd32.exe somewhere and double clicking it once a year is a "pain in the butt", but that's just me (and that's only if you want to keep updating the thing to bleeding edge firmware)

That would be true if Windows 10 wasn't a huge turd. I had to disable the Windows firewall to get tftpd working. I had to search this thread to find your recommendation to do so. Ok, so tftpd is working...for a while. Flashes went well. Until they didn't. Rebooted Windows. Still not working. It was as if tftpd wasn't even running. I screwed around with Windows and tftpd for an hour with no success. I even tried running it as a Service. There is virtually zero documentation for tftpd64.exe.

I'm sure those of you who work with enterprise switches on a daily basis know all the the ins and outs of tftpd64.exe but for the first timer it can be a big time sink. Especially so, if like me, you barely know your way around Windows 10. I stopped paying attention to Windows after 7.

I should have started with Linux to begin with but due to unusual circumstances I don't have access to my usual Linux boxes. I dug out an old laptop and slapped Fedora on it. I installed the tftp-server package. Looked in /etc for a tftp.conf file. There was none.

Read the man pages. They suck, only upstream info, nothing about actually configuring on Fedora. Sigh... Head to google. Wow, the packager really did a crap job. Needed to copy and edit two service files to get it running. Not the usual "dpkg install, edit conf file, systemctl start service" experience you get with every other daemon in existence.

Given all of that, it's fair to say TFTP was a pain in the butt for me. Maybe not for you guys who have working installs ready to go because you use it daily for work.

I would have saved a lot of time and frustration if I'd gone the Linux route to begin with but I didn't want to take time time to do the Linux install. My fail on that.

Have some understanding for those of us new to enterprise gear. Not everyone gets to play with this stuff on a daily basis at work.


EDIT:
Just ordered a bunch of fiber stuff. Brace yourselves for noob questions the likes of which you've never seen before!

 

[kapone]

Just ordered a bunch of fiber stuff. Brace yourselves for noob questions the likes of which you've never seen before!

I'm unsubscribing from this thread...

 

[ccie4526]

to actually answer your question, that's what 90% of the users in this giant thread are doing, and that's exactly the state the switch will operate in after following the quick config guide in the OP. Then if you ever want the extra L2+ or L3 features, they're there ready to go

This is going to be my first venture down the path of something other than Cisco... I'm adding to/replacing a pair of Cat3560CX-12PD switches because I'll be able to increase 10Gb port density... and I'll likely be doing the mod to put more quiet fans into the unit. Really wanted to get a ICX7250-24P, but I'm still being cheap until I get my brain wrapped around this new stuff. Look for a PM from me once I get back home and get my hands on the unit.

 

[JJ27]

Is this a good price for the model?

ICX7450-24-E Brocade 24 Port GbE w/4x10GbE SFP/2x40G QSFP+ Uplinks 2x 250W *k02N | eBay

<p>ICX7450-24-E Brocade 24 Port GbE w/4x10GbE SFP (ICX7400-4X10GF)/2x40G QSFP+ Uplinks (ICX7400-1X40GQ) 2x 250W *K02N. Condition is "Used". Fan Handle and one of the Power Supply handles is bent/cosmetically challenged however is fully functional. Shipped with FedEx Ground.</p>

www.ebay.com

 

[klui]

What ?
The bigger versions can do quite the advanced routing

static
RIP
RIPng
OSPFv2
OSPFv3
BGP

Really? That's nice. What is the delineation for those that support hardware L3?

 

[klui]

That would be true if Windows 10 wasn't a huge turd. I had to disable the Windows firewall to get tftpd working. I had to search this thread to find your recommendation to do so. Ok, so tftpd is working...for a while. Flashes went well. Until they didn't. Rebooted Windows. Still not working. It was as if tftpd wasn't even running. I screwed around with Windows and tftpd for an hour with no success. I even tried running it as a Service. There is virtually zero documentation for tftpd64.exe.

Your problem is caused by Windows 10 associating a new network connection to the public profile. You can modify/create firewall rules for the tftp application so it applies across domain, private, and public profiles or reconfigure W10 to default all new network connections to a specific profile. It is a pain. The setting reverts to public when a switch reboots because the link drops and W10 thinks it's a new connection. Maybe it doesn't happen in all cases but I've experienced it across multiple switch vendors.

It may seem preferable to disable the firewall altogether but defense in depth is a good thing. I've done that before but only when I used Windows 2003 Server as a workstation.

 

[eduncan911]

Unlike Mikrotik switches you don't need switch-only FW for vendors like Brocade because the routing is limited. But I've read they will soon have routing code going through ASICs though I don't know when or even if they're doing it already.

What ?
The bigger versions can do quite the advanced routing

static
RIP
RIPng
OSPFv2
OSPFv3
BGP

Really? That's nice. What is the delineation for those that support hardware L3?

OK, I'll jump in here for a moment... Can't tell if that's a sarcastic statement of, "that's nice."

Have you read the first post of this thread, in full?

These are all hardware L3 ASIC switches. Every-single-one, as stated in the first post. Unlike Mikrotik that offloads ACL and other L3-like functions to the CPU, Brocade are 100% ASIC routers.

What he listed above are advanced Routing protocols available in the higher-end models - all in ASIC hardware too.

EDIT: Re-reading everything, I think you are confusing a couple of things here.

Mikrotik makes both Routers and Switches. Their routers use NAT. And, Mikrotik includes what they call a "switch chip" on many routerboards. You can read the details here, specifically the note as to which models have the switch chip, especially which CRS editions.

All of their switches, and their routerBoards w/switch chips, only has basic L2 functionality available in the ASIC chip. Everything else, especially all Routing and NAT functionality, are all on the CPU. There are some newer models that have limited L3 functionality on the ASIC chip (interVLAN, no ACL-only). But even those suffer as soon as you add ACL or something else to the L3 configuration - which, gets re-routed off to the CPU.

Brocade simply does not do NAT, and therefore do not act like "routers." With Enterprise switches, you typically will have an Enterprise Firewall/Router upstream of it.

I could be wrong about the higher-end Brocade editions with advanced routing protocols not doing NAT though - someone here can correct me.

 

[klui]

OK, I'll jump in here for a moment... Can't tell if that's a sarcastic statement of, "that's nice."

No, I was not sarcastic and was genuinely interested. I like to know the landscape of what's available out there.

If you buy new and know their limitations, you really can't go wrong with Mikrotik. I have enterprise switches from HP, Arista, Juniper, Mellanox, Celestica, Supermicro, Extreme, Nortel, 3com in addition to Brocade in my lab. It doesn't hurt to learn more about other vendors. The one vendor I don't want to get into is Cisco due to ever-increasing licensing restrictions.

Yes, I've read all 282 pages an find it quite informative.

 

[mtcoombes]

Just jumped into Brocade by buying a 6450 for a good price on eBay. I’ve got a USB to RJ-45 console cable that works for Cisco, am I going to be able to use it for console access on the 6450? Or will I need to hack together some kind of adapter - looks like Cisco’s and Brocade’s RJ-45 pinout both use pin 3 for TX and 6 for RX? Thanks for any help!

 

[fohdeesha]

Just jumped into Brocade by buying a 6450 for a good price on eBay. I’ve got a USB to RJ-45 console cable that works for Cisco, am I going to be able to use it for console access on the 6450? Or will I need to hack together some kind of adapter - looks like Cisco’s and Brocade’s RJ-45 pinout both use pin 3 for TX and 6 for RX? Thanks for any help!

it's the exact same RJ45 serial connection as all other network equip out there so your adapter will work fine

 

[klui]

Wondering if I could pick the brains of all of you.

I previously had the qsfp port working with a breakout cable to a few hosts. I moved my setup and powered everything back on, but the ports won't come up. Tried rebooting both the hosts and switches.

The front 10gbs are fine using the same branded cables but single DACs to the same NICs.

Any ideas?

Maybe you didn't save your running configuration and whatever settings on those ports wasn't applied.

You didn't insert the cables all the way. Try another port.

If you have a QSFP+ to QSFP+ cable, connect the cable to both broken out ports to see if it gets a link. Check using something like show interface description.

 

[kapone]

Nope. (Unless you're stacking...)

 

[NateS]

Wondering if I could pick the brains of all of you.

I previously had the qsfp port working with a breakout cable to a few hosts. I moved my setup and powered everything back on, but the ports won't come up. Tried rebooting both the hosts and switches.

The front 10gbs are fine using the same branded cables but single DACs to the same NICs.

Any ideas?

Following because I'm having the same issue, except that mine never worked in the first place. At first I assumed I got a bad cable, but now I've tried with 3 different QSFP->4xSFP+ DAC cables (1 Dell branded Amphenol, 2 10GTek), and none of them will link up.

I do see further up in the thread that someone managed to physically break their QSFP ports, and I suppose it's possible that happened to mine before I bought it on Ebay. But I can see the cables with 'show media' so I don't think that's too likely

The only slightly odd thing I notice is that show media lists the cables as 40gbe, rather than 10gbe breakouts (as I've seen some people's listings in this thread show). Is this normal, or could it possibly be that the cables misidentifying is causing the switch to not try to link up?

telnet@6610-livingroom>show media ethernet 1/2/7
Port 1/2/7:Type : 40GBASE-Passive Copper
Vendor Name: 10Gtek Serial Num: Q191100300070 Revision: 01
telnet@6610-livingroom>show media ethernet 1/2/2
Port 1/2/2:Type : 40GBASE-Passive Copper
Vendor Name: Amphenol Serial Num: CN04Y04W7AG40ME Revision: A