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

[fohdeesha]

Hehe, already been through it all with the 6610 a couple years ago - it needs to see an i2c bus with two devices (per psu) on it for the psu's - the psu itself, and an EEPROM

For the psu device address it needs to see 9 or 10 different sensors/registers for things like rail voltages, temps, fan speed etc. There's also some SMbus handshaking going on when it first powers on - which I did manage to capture years back with a logic analyzer, not sure if I still have it. For the EEPROM device address it needs to see a 16kbit EEPROM populated with valid data (psu model id, serial, vendor and revision)

I have dumps of most of these I can paste when I'm not on mobile, but as I've said before it's *really* not worth it. I've been down this road several times before with this switch and it is a hilarious amount of work and ghetto-rigging all to save 2 to 3 watts and maybe 5db at best off of an already quite efficient switch

 

[fohdeesha]

They do make telco-use -48vdc psu's for the 6610, but they can be hard to come by. They're essentially just big efficient 48v to 12v dc-dc converters with the appropriate monitoring logic. P/n is rps16dc if I remember right

 

[anomaly]

Hehe, already been through it all with the 6610 a couple years ago - it needs to see an i2c bus with two devices (per psu) on it for the psu's - the psu itself, and an EEPROM

For the psu device address it needs to see 9 or 10 different sensors/registers for things like rail voltages, temps, fan speed etc. There's also some SMbus handshaking going on when it first powers on - which I did manage to capture years back with a logic analyzer, not sure if I still have it. For the EEPROM device address it needs to see a 16kbit EEPROM populated with valid data (psu model id, serial, vendor and revision)

I have dumps of most of these I can paste when I'm not on mobile, but as I've said before it's *really* not worth it. I've been down this road several times before with this switch and it is a hilarious amount of work and ghetto-rigging all to save 2 to 3 watts and maybe 5db at best off of an already quite efficient switch

Probably not worth the hassle, though technically 2dB is *double* the loudness effectively. 4dB is already four times louder. Guess if you are in a situation where noise is not acceptable, this will matter quite a bit.

Edit: not mathematically precise to say four times louder, but in perceived loudness, 5dB is definitely noticeable. All depends on background noise and characteristics. If the noise has properties that stand out above all audible background noises, you will notice. If it annoys you, it's bad news. Same way as you can be in a library and tolerate the background noise, but someone happens to have a particularly pitched voice that happens to be noticeable regardless of loudness... Some Delta fans have a "sound" to them, the 40mm ones at least, perhaps due to fin shapes. Some PWM fans from a certain high end brand also have a strange whirring noise at low RPMs, that is absent in non PWM models of the same fan at the same RPMs. Etc. Personal choice.

 

[PGlover]

Great thread... I currently have 2 Juniper EX3300 switches in a stack configuration and 1 LB6M. I would like to replace the EX3300. Is the ICX6450 or ICX6610 a viable candidate? I need the POE model.

 

[K D]

I love the 6450-24 (no poe) ~17 watts with 2 10g ports and 8 1g ports in use.

The 6610 pulls ~100 watts with just one port connected.

I guess you make a choice based on the ports you need. I recommend the 6450 if 4 10G per switch is enough.

 

[Marsh]

I have a ICX6450 unit with a noisy fan ( not sure what the problem is ? ), I replace it with Sunon Maglevs 40mm fan.
ICX6450 is not noisy anymore.

After 2 hours running, room temp is 28 deg-c

show chassis
The stack unit 1 chassis info:

Power supply 1 (NA - AC - Regular) present, status ok
Power supply 2 not present

Fan ok, speed (auto): [[1]]<->2

Fan speed switching temperature thresholds:
1 -> 2 @ 71 deg-C
1 <- 2 @ 66 deg-C

Sensor B Temperature Readings:
Current temperature : 52.0 deg-C
Sensor A Temperature Readings:
Current temperature : 56.5 deg-C
Warning level.......: 73.0 deg-C
Shutdown level......: 83.0 deg-C

Question, is the temperature acceptable?

 

[PGlover]

I love the 6450-24 (no poe) ~17 watts with 2 10g ports and 8 1g ports in use.

The 6610 pulls ~100 watts with just one port connected.

I guess you make a choice based on the ports you need. I recommend the 6450 if 4 10G per switch is enough.

How is the 6450 specs compared to the Juniper EX3300? Is the 6450 stackable? I will need the POE model ...

 

[fohdeesha]

How is the 6450 specs compared to the Juniper EX3300? Is the 6450 stackable? I will need the POE model ...

they're essentially identical, neither has an oversubscribed backplane, both do the exact same amount of mpps and GBPS aggregate, (96mpps and 128gbps for the 24 port models), and they have the same L3 features (minus BGP on the ICX6450, which IS available on the EX3300 with a license)

And yes they are stackable - so if you want to keep your setup capacity/features the same, the ICX6450 would be what you want. If you want an upgrade, you could go with the ICX6610, which has nearly 6x the capacity, 16x 10gbE ports, 2x 40gbE, many more L3 features (including BGP etc) - but as mentioned it is louder and draws 100w - that said it would replace both your stacked switches with one unit

upon googling a single EX3300 draws 47w idle, so you're already at 100w total - if you replaced it with a single ICX6610 you'd be at the same power draw, if you replaced it with a pair of ICX6450's you'd cut your power draw in half

 

[PGlover]

they're essentially identical, neither has an oversubscribed backplane, both do the exact same amount of mpps and GBPS aggregate, (96mpps and 128gbps for the 24 port models), and they have the same L3 features (minus BGP on the ICX6450, which IS available on the EX3300 with a license)

And yes they are stackable - so if you want to keep your setup capacity/features the same, the ICX6450 would be what you want. If you want an upgrade, you could go with the ICX6610, which has nearly 6x the capacity, 16x 10gbE ports, 2x 40gbE, many more L3 features (including BGP etc) - but as mentioned it is louder and draws 100w - that said it would replace both your stacked switches with one unit

upon googling a single EX3300 draws 47w idle, so you're already at 100w total - if you replaced it with a single ICX6610 you'd be at the same power draw, if you replaced it with a pair of ICX6450's you'd cut your power draw in half

So 1 Brocade ICX6610 could replaced the 2 stacked EX3300 and L6BM unit? Please clarify.

 

[fohdeesha]

I forgot you had the LB6M - I was thinking just replacing the two EX3300's - if you did that you'd come out the same power draw wise.

if you bought one ICX6610 to replace the two EX3300's AND the LB6M, you'd save 120 watts of power draw and probably save your ears as well.

It just depends on how many 10gbE ports you're using/need - a 6610 comes with 16x 10gbE ports, 24/48 copper (PoE if needed), and 2x 40gbE ports. 40gbE NICs have come down to about 35 dollars if you wanna upgrade the speed on your NAS or something

 

[PGlover]

I forgot you had the LB6M - I was thinking just replacing the two EX3300's - if you did that you'd come out the same power draw wise.

if you bought one ICX6610 to replace the two EX3300's AND the LB6M, you'd save 120 watts of power draw and probably save your ears as well.

It just depends on how many 10gbE ports you're using/need - a 6610 comes with 16x 10gbE ports, 24/48 copper (PoE if needed), and 2x 40gbE ports. 40gbE NICs have come down to about 35 dollars if you wanna upgrade the speed on your NAS or something

I need at least 12 10gbE ports and 48 1gbE with 3 POE ports... So the 6610 may fit the bill.. I still would like to have some redundancy/HA with another 6610 stacked? What is your recommendation?

 

[fohdeesha]

You can stack two ICX6610's and be at the same power draw you are now (this is what I do at home). They have really mature stacking code with hitless failover of all l2/l3 protocols etc (pretty sure the EX3300 has the same). You can LACP from your hosts across to both switches so if 1 switch fails or is taken offline they won't even notice.

Stacking two of them would give you 24x 10gbE ports and 2x 40gbE ports (along with a ton of copper)

 

[PGlover]

You can stack two ICX6610's and be at the same power draw you are now (this is what I do at home). They have really mature stacking code with hitless failover of all l2/l3 protocols etc (pretty sure the EX3300 has the same). You can LACP from your hosts across to both switches so if 1 switch fails or is taken offline they won't even notice.

Stacking two of them would give you 24x 10gbE ports and 2x 40gbE ports (along with a ton of copper)

I like that idea.. What specific model number in the ICX6610 should I be looking for on Ebay?

 

[fohdeesha]

there's the base 6610 number then the copper port count, so 6610-24 or 6610-48 - PoE models have a "P" at the end, like 6610-24P

Ebay sellers are notorious for listing these wrong, they will list a model as a "6610-24P" but when you look at the pictures, on the front of the chassis where it has the model number, you can clearly see it's missing a P and only says "ICX6610-24" - eg it's NOT the PoE model. so just browse around and be sure to check pictures

you can mix and match any type of 6610 in a stack as well, the stacking code doesn't care. So you could do 1 poe chassis and one non poe chassis

you could offer $200 each on a pair of these for example (two PoE models) Brocade ICX6610-24P-E 24 port 1G RJ45 PoE+, plus 8 x 1G SFPP uplinks, RPS16-E | eBay

 

[PGlover]

there's the base 6610 number then the copper port count, so 6610-24 or 6610-48 - PoE models have a "P" at the end, like 6610-24P

Ebay sellers are notorious for listing these wrong, they will list a model as a "6610-24P" but when you look at the pictures, on the front of the chassis where it has the model number, you can clearly see it's missing a P and only says "ICX6610-24" - eg it's NOT the PoE model. so just browse around and be sure to check pictures

you can mix and match any type of 6610 in a stack as well, the stacking code doesn't care. So you could do 1 poe chassis and one non poe chassis

you could offer $200 each on a pair of these for example (two PoE models) Brocade ICX6610-24P-E 24 port 1G RJ45 PoE+, plus 8 x 1G SFPP uplinks, RPS16-E | eBay

I would thinking about getting 2 48 port versions, but not sure I need all those ports.. Would you agree?

 

[fohdeesha]

well I mean, I can't tell you how many ports you need, but yeah I would think 48 total (2x 24 port chassis) would be more than enough copper ports. you still have all the fiber/sfp+ ports as well

 

[fohdeesha]

Question, is the temperature acceptable?

yup, that's perfectly fine. You can see from the fan speed indicator it hasn't even gotten hot enough to ramp up the fan, it's still running it on its slowest setting

 

[PGlover]

Is there some documentation on the CLI commands for the ICX6610 or will most of the Layer 3 Cisco switch CLI commands work on this switch as well?

 

[nthu9280]

Is there some documentation on the CLI commands for the ICX6610 or will most of the Layer 3 Cisco switch CLI commands work on this switch as well?

Did you look the first post in this thread?

 

[PGlover]

Did you look the first post in this thread?

Sorry.. I just downloaded the zip file.. Thanks