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

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crackelf

Member
Apr 11, 2021
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yeah I think that last one might be the cringiest thing I've seen on here in years lmao
lol you guys should untuck your shirts every once in a while.

Still don't want to admit you were wrong though huh? It's not so hard, big man.
Could not agree more.... best part is, its showing on google results. I only just recently got here and this is what I found in relation to Brocade + Mellonox
That guy is crinnnnnnngggggeeee
This is the top SEO because there were no resources on this before me. The algorithm doesn't lie.

I'm simply out here contributing to the knowledge base through documentation. Keep up the "crinnnnnnngggggeeee" posts though buddy. Big lols from ur internet friends!

Nobody has brought any hard proof to this thread prior to my post. Just empty promises of "it works trust me!". Prior to my posts people would be lead to believe big @fohdeesha was right. I brought the receipts:
@fohdeesha The Infallible, confirmed fallible - ConnectX-4 Lx DO NOT work with KAIAM modules:
You got a nice new avatar for it!
My last artwork was removed for "crimes against vision" so I had to bring my A game :) I'm happy that it can be appreciated by our one true savior


edit: Don't worry I'm actually leaving this time. I'll miss you guys, and the fun we had here, but will keep people updated on any alternative modules and fiber in my other thread.
 
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frogtech

Well-Known Member
Jan 4, 2016
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Damn boys, ya'll popping off in here.

@fohdeesha

thanks for the setup guide. when I got my switches I tried following ruckus' update documentation which for the most part is probably fine but it seems to leave out some steps in their examples which caused me to somehow get a ruckus wireless bootloader flashed? don't ask how that's possible lol. very thankful that they have the preboot environment that lets you flash over TFTP
 

DaSnipe

New Member
Feb 27, 2022
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Just wanted to thank you @fohdeesha for the massive guide, allowed me to purchase one of these ICX6450's on ebay for super cheap. Going to replace another tp-link POE switch and get my main sections of the network on 10gbpe. Got my TrueNAS and workstation running at 10gbpe. I got a FS.com RJ45 80m transceiver running 41m of Cat5e to the brocade and getting 10gbps connections and close to 6gbps on iperf/ 550 MB/s transfers.

I was going to ask a question but I figured it out before I finished this message haha. Now to see if this thing can power my Rb5009g via poe
 

NateR

New Member
Feb 10, 2022
26
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Hello all,

Plugged in a "new to me" 6450-24p, and the thing is hella loud. Ordered some Comair Rotron "Gryphon" GDA4028-12BB fans and it's... still hella loud. Pulled the fans out and running them outside the case, it looks like the most annoying part of the noise is the vibrations and the PWM buzz. Vibration isolation should be pretty easy, but the PWM buzz is the biggest issue at the moment.

I ran across this post (https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...be-40gbe-switching.21107/page-187#post-269342) from earlier in this thred, where a guy used a 330µF to quiet it down. I ran the same test he did briefly, and it does indeed eliminate the PWM buzz.

I've spent the entirety of this evening trying to understand out how low-pass filters work, but I must be incredibly dense, because I'm still just as puzzled as when I started. Based on what I've read, it sounds like you need a resistor and a capacitor to make it work - yet it seems to work just fine with a capacitor by itself.

My question: Does a capacitor, when used in the manner described in that post, have a chance of damaging anything? And if so, and a resistor really should be used, how would one determine what resistor value to use? (and anyone know the PWM frequency on the 6450? I've got a pretty nice (Brymen) multimeter, but the DC frequency function is reading 0hz or 60hz depending when I measure it, and that guy's video show 3khz).

Thank you
 
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fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
Nov 20, 2016
2,645
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fohdeesha.com
Hello all,

Plugged in a "new to me" 6450-24p, and the thing is hella loud. Ordered some Comair Rotron "Gryphon" GDA4028-12BB fans and it's... still hella loud. Pulled the fans out and running them outside the case, it looks like the most annoying part of the noise is the vibrations and the PWM buzz.

I ran across this post (https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...be-40gbe-switching.21107/page-187#post-269342) from earlier in this thred, where a guy used a 330µF to quiet it down. I ran the same test he did briefly, and it does indeed eliminate the PWM buzz.

I've spent the entirety of this evening trying to understand out how low-pass filters work, but I must be incredibly dense, because I'm still just as puzzled as when I started. Based on what I've read, it sounds like you need a resistor and a capacitor to make it work - yet it seems to work just fine with a capacitor by itself.

My question: Does a capacitor, when used in the manner described in that post, have a chance of damaging anything? And if so, and a resistor really should be used, how would one determine what resistor value to use? (and anyone know the PWM frequency on the 6450? I've got a pretty nice (Brymen) multimeter, but the DC frequency function is reading 0hz or 60hz depending when I measure it, and that guy's video show 3khz).

Thank you
When you cold boot it, does it start out really loud, then the fans spin way down about 2 or 3 minutes into boot? It sounds like it may be stuck in full fan speed, after it finishes booting the fans should spin down to like ~20% of their full boot speed
 

NateR

New Member
Feb 10, 2022
26
18
3
When you cold boot it, does it start out really loud, then the fans spin way down about 2 or 3 minutes into boot? It sounds like it may be stuck in full fan speed, after it finishes booting the fans should spin down to like ~20% of their full boot speed
No, it definitely spins down. Just the PWM buzz is really annoying, and there's a bit of vibration I'll need to dampen (when I remove the fans from the case and add the 330µF capacitor like that guy did in his first video, it gets very tolerably quiet). PWM buzz is the most annoying part, really. The 330µF quieted it down nicely, but am currently looking for electronic guidance on whether just hooking up the capacitor like that is safe or not - I have a very basic understanding about how different components (capacitors, resistors, diodes, etc.) work, but anything beyond that I have very little understanding of.
 

kpfleming

Active Member
Dec 28, 2021
311
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Pelham NY USA
I've spent the entirety of this evening trying to understand out how low-pass filters work, but I must be incredibly dense, because I'm still just as puzzled as when I started. Based on what I've read, it sounds like you need a resistor and a capacitor to make it work - yet it seems to work just fine with a capacitor by itself.
The fan is itself an inductor, and can be part of the filter.
 

juju

New Member
Sep 29, 2021
28
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I'm kind of wondering if the Brocade needed more commands to configure correctly & you missed something & the cisco needed less & was easier to make work. I'm going to try this with a brocade (switching away from a 3945e) and I'll post how it goes. My brocades are a stack of 6610s however, not the 64xx series.
@RobstarUSA - Did you ever get around to trying to setup mDNS/Bonjour ? I am interested in the outcome of this as well. It's quite surprising there isn't a good guide here on how to set this up properly on brocade switches. (working reliably, I mean ). Just like @nickf1227 , I can't seem to get it to work. I am however, much less knowledgeable in the space than he his. I have an ICX7250 which is working fine except this issue of mDNS/Bonjour traffic on my network. I won't mind switching to another brand just to get it to work .

From the Cisco DNA service for Bonjour documentation :

Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) Service for Bonjour is a software-defined controller-based solution that enables devices to advertise and discover Bonjour services across Layer 3 network boundaries
Is there an equivalent for Brocade/Rukus switches?
 
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paxswill

New Member
Jul 12, 2019
2
0
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@RobstarUSA - Did you ever get around to trying to setup mDNS/Bonjour ? I am interested in the outcome of this as well. It's quite surprising there isn't a good guide here on how to set this up properly on brocade switches. (working reliably, I mean ). Just like @nickf1227 , I can't seem to get it to work. I am however, much less knowledgeable in the space than he his. I have an ICX7250 which is working fine except this issue of mDNS/Bonjour traffic on my network. I won't mind switching to another brand just to get it to work .

From the Cisco DNA service for Bonjour documentation :



Is there an equivalent for Brocade/Rukus switches?
AFAIK there isn't a built-in service to the switch for this. Avahi (common OSS mDNS implementation) has a reflector mode that will repeat mDNS broadcasts across different networks. I have this configured on a host with access to all tagged VLANs I want broadcasts repeated across.

As a side note, I'd recommend running Avahi like this on a dedicated host (or at least one that you don't want to actually use mDNS on) so that you can disable caching to work around a bug with continually changing hostnames on Apple devices
 

koifish59

Member
Sep 30, 2020
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Any confirmed cheap SFP+ optics that work fine mellanox cards?

I have these Brocade 57-0000075-01 SFP+ modules and although they work well with the brocade switch, my mellanox connectx-4 card seems to not like them.

edit: nm, I just grabbed a handful of these Mellanox MFM1T02A-SR for $8 a pop
 
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fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
Nov 20, 2016
2,645
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fohdeesha.com
Oh, interesting the 6610 does support a mixed stack. The 7k series docs are explicit about no mixed stacking.
to be fair the 6610 + 6450 mixed stacking is a bit of a misnomer, they stack in the sense of becoming one "unit" that you manage together, but under the hood the icx6450 is just acting as an L2 port extender - anything l3 and above it has to hairpin over to the 6610 master and back for the 6610 to handle, and also of course that means it's not redundant (if you lose the 6610, the remaining 6450 is just going to be able to handle local l2 traffic only and nothing else)
 

NablaSquaredG

Layer 1 Magician
Aug 17, 2020
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@fohdeesha Do you have any idea regarding my stacking issue? Is it possible to stack ICX6610s with the 4x10G QSFP breakout ports only and use the 40G non-breakout QSFP ports for uplink?

Is yes, how? I just can't get it to work.