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

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CED6688

New Member
Dec 4, 2019
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ICX6610-24 with dual RevA power supplies arrived yesterday. Plugged in and immediately my heart sank knowing that the noise level was not going to be acceptable to the wife (who heard it from across the house and immediately made that very clear). Upgraded the OS and certainly it got a bit better after the OS came up (measured at 54-59db noise level down from about 70db at boot). Tried combinations of 1 vs 2 power supplies and mostly the same.

Put it back up on eBay and now looking to get an ICX6450 or 7250...
 

vangoose

Active Member
May 21, 2019
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Canada
ICX6610-24 with dual RevA power supplies arrived yesterday. Plugged in and immediately my heart sank knowing that the noise level was not going to be acceptable to the wife (who heard it from across the house and immediately made that very clear). Upgraded the OS and certainly it got a bit better after the OS came up (measured at 54-59db noise level down from about 70db at boot). Tried combinations of 1 vs 2 power supplies and mostly the same.

Put it back up on eBay and now looking to get an ICX6450 or 7250...
I'm trying on fan mod on 6650 to see if it can bring down the noise to acceptable level.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
7,625
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ICX6610-24 with dual RevA power supplies arrived yesterday. Plugged in and immediately my heart sank knowing that the noise level was not going to be acceptable to the wife (who heard it from across the house and immediately made that very clear). Upgraded the OS and certainly it got a bit better after the OS came up (measured at 54-59db noise level down from about 70db at boot). Tried combinations of 1 vs 2 power supplies and mostly the same.

Put it back up on eBay and now looking to get an ICX6450 or 7250...
6450 is for sure much quieter than a 6610 even when they're 'quiet'... odd to me that dual PSU was just as loud as single, in my experience it's much much quieter. (Going from 1PSU 1FAN to 2PSU 2FAN made a huge difference, but I still wouldn't want to be in the same room as one ha ha)
 

CED6688

New Member
Dec 4, 2019
15
10
3
6450 is for sure much quieter than a 6610 even when they're 'quiet'... odd to me that dual PSU was just as loud as single, in my experience it's much much quieter. (Going from 1PSU 1FAN to 2PSU 2FAN made a huge difference, but I still wouldn't want to be in the same room as one ha ha)
The second PS dropped it 3-4db but wasn't enough to make a material difference -- probably enough to make it work if you'll generally be in the next room, but not in the same one. There's a point between the "FULL ON" at boot (vacuum cleaner) and the regular "speed 1" where the fans spin down and make you believe that it's all going to be okay for a few moments. Not sure how much quieter the Rev B power supplies are, but if it can get anywhere close to that, you could probably even get by with having it in the same room...
 

dashpuppy

Member
Dec 16, 2018
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Guys, i was given the link to this thread :p lots of good information in here!!

I am very new to Brocade switches.

I found a Brocade ICX6450-24P switch with 24 1gig links with POE and 4 x 10gig uplink ports. PERFECT.

My question is, do i need to buy some special licenses or require a engineering degree to setup vlans and port taggings ?

My idea is to use my Current Untangle firewall with 6 vlans that I run & connect my server with a 10gig fiber cable to one of the 10gig ports on the switch. Is this switch worth 150$ or should i be looking at a different switch ?
 

ronclark

New Member
Dec 6, 2019
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Hi Guys I am new here,
I ran across this thread and had to make a account. I have to say this seems to fit the bill what i have been looking for.
I am running three systems with Mellanox Connectx 3 649281-B21 direct connected to my workstation, hypervisor server and freenas.
one of these switching will make my life way easier.
 

CED6688

New Member
Dec 4, 2019
15
10
3
Just noticed that the 6610-24 (non-POE) that I picked up has two different types of power supplies. Somehow I wasn't paying attention before:

Power supply 1 (AC - PoE) present, status ok
Model Number: 23-0000142-02
Serial Number: 5JZ
Firmware Ver: A
Power supply 1 Fan Air Flow Direction: Front to Back
Power supply 2 (AC - Regular) present, status ok
Model Number: 23-0000144-01
Serial Number: 0CH
Firmware Ver: A
Power supply 2 Fan Air Flow Direction: Front to Back​

It's definitely a non-POE unit. Is it safe to assume that there is no advantage/disadvantage to this given that I don't have the POE board?

While I put the box on eBay and already purchased a 6450 to replace it, I've configured it and notice that the sound really doesn't leave the room once it is booted and really going to miss the extra 10gb ports. May hold on to it after all. I've configured it to route 6 VLANs, including 4x 10gb servers (NAS, elasticsearch/kibana, etc...) on my home network, and it is fun to see it chew through things that were killing my Mikrotik while using less than 2% CPU. :)

Highly recommend and thanks @fohdeesha for everything he's done on this. Great stuff!
 

infoMatt

Active Member
Apr 16, 2019
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I've configured it to route 6 VLANs, including 4x 10gb servers (NAS, elasticsearch/kibana, etc...) on my home network, and it is fun to see it chew through things that were killing my Mikrotik while using less than 2% CPU. :)
Routing on those type of switches is done in the ASIC, not on the CPU... once booted, the CPU could well be tunrned off, and you wouldn't notice that much (ICMP snooping and broadcast might hit the main processor, but most of the traffic won't). ;)
 
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dashpuppy

Member
Dec 16, 2018
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please read the update guide bold and centered in the first post of this thread which has instructions to unlock them

I thought i was reading that wrong, that they give the licenses for free :)

Programming these switches is all cli ? or is there a web gui? or a piece of software we can run to manage / make changes ? I Want to make sure that i can change the POE versions for different devices i have. Ex Unifi and my POE cameras.
 

fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
Nov 20, 2016
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I thought i was reading that wrong, that they give the licenses for free :)

Programming these switches is all cli ? or is there a web gui? or a piece of software we can run to manage / make changes ? I Want to make sure that i can change the POE versions for different devices i have. Ex Unifi and my POE cameras.
Literally all covered in the very first post
 

aflow

New Member
Apr 13, 2016
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Strange... mine pulls 20-ish watt only during POST/bootloader... as soon as the ports are activated it jumps straight to 35-36W, according to my meter... I'll repeat the test as soon as possible adding a constant load to the meter, just to see if it's an error due to the low current passing through...

And as far as I can tell, there's no appreciable difference on power usage disabling the PoE on all ports and even disabling all the copper ports! Say a watt, inside the margin of error of the meter itself.
I have a pair of these and I’m measuring approximately the same values as you in both units. Is a big difference but I don’t know the reason, the PSUs don’t “look” bad...
 

rootwyrm

Member
Mar 25, 2017
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www.rootwyrm.com
So, I have a conundrum... stuck looking at the 7450 and similar because I rather want BGP (I'd prefer ISIS but Brocade doesn't even do that on the VDX.)

But the noise level is nowhere near acceptable for something that has to be 10 feet from my head, and can't go in the rack. The 6450 with fan modification is right about the limit of what I would consider acceptable (with some additional baffle.) Anyone had any luck getting the BGP capable models down to about that noise level? Failing that, any suggestions for alternatives when I don't mind spending more if I have to?
 
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dashpuppy

Member
Dec 16, 2018
48
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So, I have a conundrum... stuck looking at the 7450 and similar because I rather want BGP (I'd prefer ISIS but Brocade doesn't even do that on the VDX.)

But the noise level is nowhere near acceptable for something that has to be 10 feet from my head, and can't go in the rack. The 6450 with fan modification is right about the limit of what I would consider acceptable (with some additional baffle.) Anyone had any luck getting the BGP capable models down to about that noise level? Failing that, any suggestions for alternatives when I don't mind spending more if I have to?
Why not change the fans ? Or put resistors on the stock fans to slow them down ?
 

rootwyrm

Member
Mar 25, 2017
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www.rootwyrm.com
Why not change the fans ? Or put resistors on the stock fans to slow them down ?
Because there isn't thermal margin on the 7450 and the like to just swap the fans, and the primary issue is the PSU fans. Someone is welcome to do that on their ICX or VDX, so long as they post the literal melted PCBs and PSUs that result. There is no thermal margin on stuff like the 6610 and 7450 and above.

The only way you're doing it is one of two ways:
1. Chuck the 1U form factor in the bin (which is fine since this is on a workbench, but now has you up against the firmware expected RPM issue)
2. Software mod a lower model to do BGP (which is not a small task since RFC2835/5925 needs kernel support)
 

dashpuppy

Member
Dec 16, 2018
48
21
8
Because there isn't thermal margin on the 7450 and the like to just swap the fans, and the primary issue is the PSU fans. Someone is welcome to do that on their ICX or VDX, so long as they post the literal melted PCBs and PSUs that result. There is no thermal margin on stuff like the 6610 and 7450 and above.
Pretty sure 100% NOTHING is going to melt if you change the fans and lower their speed. The switch doesn't pull KW's of power.