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

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NablaSquaredG

Bringing 100G switches to homelabs
Aug 17, 2020
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Question Re 7450:
As mentioned some pages earlier, I've got a broken 7450-48 where SPI write error occur

uboot reports them as mx25l6405d, I've looked on the board and could find two 25l6433f marked with colours near the two BCM56548

any idea whether those are the SPI flashes, or do I need to look somewhere else?
 

papageek

New Member
Feb 17, 2023
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correct, two are breakout only and cannot be connected to a 40gbE NIC at 40gbE
Do you happen to know if I could do a normal qsfp+ 40 to 40 dac between the Brocade breakout port and a Chelsio t580 in spider mode, or would I need something like passive breakout optics on each end with couplers? I would then setup lacp or similar on the ports at both ends. I need4 hosts connected at 40 and trying to avoid using my painfully loud 6650.

Thank you in advance for any feedback!
 

papageek

New Member
Feb 17, 2023
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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
I was wondering about this. Would it be possible to use an arduino to spoof connected fans? Just physically remove the fans and connect the new board up? Idea being make a small cabnet, remove switch cover and put some quiet noctua fans directly on components and exhaust the cabnet with a quiet 1500 cfm hvac whole house fan with only intake switch front face?
 

jimmy1987

New Member
Apr 16, 2019
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Do you happen to know if I could do a normal qsfp+ 40 to 40 dac between the Brocade breakout port and a Chelsio t580 in spider mode, or would I need something like passive breakout optics on each end with couplers? I would then setup lacp or similar on the ports at both ends. I need4 hosts connected at 40 and trying to avoid using my painfully loud 6650.

Thank you in advance for any feedback!
They are really breakout ports so a default 1x 40g cable is not going to work.
 
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Shad

New Member
Oct 15, 2022
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Hi folks

Firstly - big thank you to everyone contributing here. I've made use of the guides and info and am running a pair of ICX6450-48 switches in a stack and it's been working great for a couple of years now.

What I'd like to do next is replace one of the switches with the PoE version, ICX6540-48P. The documentation and video guides say that as long as the replacement stack member is the same model and has been erased, it will be adopted and the config applied. "It just works".

Does anybody know if that is also the case when replacing non-PoE with PoE version of otherwise the exact same model?
 

nextrack68

New Member
Jul 26, 2022
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I have a simple VLAN setup question.

I have successfully setup VLANs for multiple WAP using the dual mode and can broadcast multiple SSIDs while using pfSense to do the routing.

Now I'm trying to get my wired stuff lined out. Basically all I need to do is set ports 20-29 to VLAN 30. I have the VLAN setup in pfSense and configured in my 6450P just like my other VLANs but cannot make it work. I do not understand why I can't figure it out. Thank you
 

NablaSquaredG

Bringing 100G switches to homelabs
Aug 17, 2020
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They are really breakout ports so a default 1x 40g cable is not going to work.
That's not correct.

I have connected the ICX6610 breakout ports to Mellanox SX6036 QSFP Port in Split Mode with a Single QSFP cable and they connected at 4x10G.
A QSFP cables is essentially just 4 SFP cables bundled into one ;)
 

dswartz

Active Member
Jul 14, 2011
611
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@dswartz As you might be aware Ruckus does not recommend this new 09.* firmware for anything that I know of yet. Certainly not the 7150 or the 7250. Had major bugs earlier and still proving itself over time. If you are leery, 08.0.95 is a good choice. The config file format has slightly changed for some things with 09.* and downgrading can be an issue for some.

Have you tried to reload the 7150 and see if the problem recurs or whether it was a one-time post-install bootup issue?
Well, that was NOT fun. We live in a semi-rural area. Lots of power glitches and tree limbs taking out power lines. I'd say we get 1+ hour outages once or twice a year. Long enough the UPS can't keep the switch&etc up. 08.0.92bT211 was the good release I was running. Power comes back, but no ports lit on the 7150. Console cable in and see 'OS>' prompt. Scroll back a bit and see error messages about missing directories and python3. Bizarrely primary AND secondary seemed borked. I admit not knowing the internals, but I would have thought the 2 flash partitions wouldn't be both vulnerable like this? Due to the way I set things up, it was hard to recover this. The 7150 had a 2-port LAG to the stacked switches, so of course that was down, so the tftp VM was inaccessible, and I didn't have tftp server on my windows 10 desktop. After many trials and tribulations, I managed to boot the 7150 from the old FW version, and once that was up, copy the old FW to BOTH flash partitions, reboot again, and re-enter the LAG info and I was back. Very strange indeed.
 

tubs-ffm

Active Member
Sep 1, 2013
220
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Yes, much to my embarassment. This is not my first rodeo, but I ****ed up. After 1 week of okay, I thought 'ok, I can upgrade the secondary!' What can I say? Duh...
Is my understanding correct? You could manage to re-flash the primary partition but you cannot re-flash the secondary?
Just delete the secondary flash and it will copy from primary automatically after reboot. Takes some minutes.
Code:
enable
erase flash secondary
reload
 

dswartz

Active Member
Jul 14, 2011
611
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Is my understanding correct? You could manage to re-flash the primary partition but you cannot re-flash the secondary?
Just delete the secondary flash and it will copy from primary automatically after reboot. Takes some minutes.
Code:
enable
erase flash secondary
reload
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I flashed new FW to primary. Ran for a week ok. Copied primary to secondary. Now, both partitions are running the new FW. I did try booting from the secondary but it failed the same exact way, which I found odd, to say the least. At that point, I had no usable partitions.

BTW, I thought it was odd that you can't install FW from a flash drive, which would have solved my f-up in minutes. To be clearer: I mean can't install once you are at the 'OS>' prompt OR the bootloader prompt. Only copy I could do was from tftp. Grumble...
 

tubs-ffm

Active Member
Sep 1, 2013
220
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BTW, I thought it was odd that you can't install FW from a flash drive, which would have solved my f-up in minutes. To be clearer: I mean can't install once you are at the 'OS>' prompt OR the bootloader prompt. Only copy I could do was from tftp. Grumble...
ICX 7150 you say?
On my previous 7250-24P it was not possible. But on my ICX 7150-24P and on my ICX 7150-C12P I can flash from USB flash drive.

Code:
enable
copy disk0 flash SPR09010eufi.bin primary
reload
 

NablaSquaredG

Bringing 100G switches to homelabs
Aug 17, 2020
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Yeah... I like Mellanoxes approach, where you can have at least images downloaded on the switch, but not installed (just ready to install).

This doesn't work from the bootloader though, but that would be a great idea in case some switch manufacturer reads this ;)
 

Vesalius

Active Member
Nov 25, 2019
263
205
43
Well, that was NOT fun. We live in a semi-rural area. Lots of power glitches and tree limbs taking out power lines. I'd say we get 1+ hour outages once or twice a year. Long enough the UPS can't keep the switch&etc up. 08.0.92bT211 was the good release I was running. Power comes back, but no ports lit on the 7150. Console cable in and see 'OS>' prompt. Scroll back a bit and see error messages about missing directories and python3. Bizarrely primary AND secondary seemed borked. I admit not knowing the internals, but I would have thought the 2 flash partitions wouldn't be both vulnerable like this? Due to the way I set things up, it was hard to recover this. The 7150 had a 2-port LAG to the stacked switches, so of course that was down, so the tftp VM was inaccessible, and I didn't have tftp server on my windows 10 desktop. After many trials and tribulations, I managed to boot the 7150 from the old FW version, and once that was up, copy the old FW to BOTH flash partitions, reboot again, and re-enter the LAG info and I was back. Very strange indeed.
Weirdly I had something similar when my area had major power outages from an ice storm that took power out for hours, exhausted the UPS and then proceeded to flicker on and off for several more hours. Although I still had a switch that seemed to function correctly, I could neither SSH into it or do anything directly at the console. Ultimately pulling the plug and then powering back up fixed that glitch, though I was nervous and ready to reinstall on a backup switch.
 

1vivy

New Member
May 8, 2022
3
0
1
Hello,

I own the icx6150 beefing beefer beefington, and I'm trying to use my GPON ONT SFP inside of this switch. This is the Nokia G-010S-A, and it's Pin 6 is wonky. So sometimes the switch is able to see the SFP ONT, and the status will be up or down. It took me a sec to realize this is prolly the issue. Better explained in the link below:


I've soldered Pin 6 to ground in my Broadcom card to deal with this, and stuck it into my router. But I'm just wondering if there is any way to deal with this switch side? Possibly through the CLI? I do know there is a lot of hidden debug commands mentioned in the wiki, but I'm too scared to mess with them. I'm maybe interested in opening up the switch to mod it.

Any clue @fohdeesha ?
 

fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
Nov 20, 2016
2,925
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fohdeesha.com
Hello,

I own the icx6150 beefing beefer beefington, and I'm trying to use my GPON ONT SFP inside of this switch. This is the Nokia G-010S-A, and it's Pin 6 is wonky. So sometimes the switch is able to see the SFP ONT, and the status will be up or down. It took me a sec to realize this is prolly the issue. Better explained in the link below:


I've soldered Pin 6 to ground in my Broadcom card to deal with this, and stuck it into my router. But I'm just wondering if there is any way to deal with this switch side? Possibly through the CLI? I do know there is a lot of hidden debug commands mentioned in the wiki, but I'm too scared to mess with them. I'm maybe interested in opening up the switch to mod it.

Any clue @fohdeesha ?
what da heck is an icx6150? lol

I don't know of any low level commands that completely bypass physical SFP presence, but from the page you linked it looks like you should just solder pin 6 to ground on the optic itself to solve it
 

1vivy

New Member
May 8, 2022
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what da heck is an icx6150? lol

I don't know of any low level commands that completely bypass physical SFP presence, but from the page you linked it looks like you should just solder pin 6 to ground on the optic itself to solve it
icx6610 wups. Worth a shot! I think I'll try to order a spare one, and open it up. The funny thing is it's been up for more than 2 hours now, while I went to get groceries. But I don't trust it. For now, I think I'll put it back into my router. Opening up the switch is overkill thinking to myself.

Thanks