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

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klui

Well-Known Member
Feb 3, 2019
824
453
63
I bought an ICX6610 48 port a few months ago, one power supply and one extra fan if it matters. It worked fine until the other day when it turned off and won't finish booting.
Go to the first page in this thread and follow the setup procedure from the top for your switch. If that doesn't work your switch's flash is probably toast.
 
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Lone Wolf

Member
Apr 3, 2022
47
9
8
Hi there!

It looks like I've joined the family! Two Tuesdays ago I saw a link to this thread on Reddit. I spent some time reading through this thread then immediately bought an ICX6450-48P off of ebay! I got it for the low price of $139 Canadian. No complaints there! What drew me to this particular switch was the 10gbE ports, the PoE, and the comment that the fan is "nearly silent" since this will be in my living room for now. I would prefer the 24 port version but none were available so 48 port it is!

It arrived by the Friday. It was in almost perfect condition save for a slight scratch across the top of the switch. Very clean inside too, components looked in good shape. The date stamped on the inside of the case was September 2012. I turned it on, and this thing was anything but "nearly silent" lol. I ended up pulling out my trusty rusty analog Radio Shack decibel meter. At three feet it was 80dB then when the fans spun down it dropped to 74dB! Disconnecting two of the fans it read 70dB at start, dropping to 65dB. Not living room friendly lol. I got a console cable on it and saw that the firmware version was 07.4.00dT31. So I hoped it was due to being an old firmware.

I started working through the guide but found the commands listed didn't work - I assume because of being an older firmware. I dug through the '?' menu until I found the commands that did what was needed, but I was unable to find a command to update the firmware with tftp. I had a look at the webui and saw there was an option to update the Primary with tftp. No option for uboot, so I told it to update the Primary and rebooted. Lo and behold the commands worked as listed. The best part: the fan is a LOT quieter now! I started the guide from the top and updated uboot, then went on to updating the PoE firmware and all the rest, and now I have a fully working, fully licensed 6450-48P. This is awesome! I'm going to learn a lot with this switch!

I've read through the first 100 pages of this thread, and the last 55 so far. I've learned a lot from everyone here, and enjoyed reading your adventures. So felt I should post mine! :D Fohdeesha, this is an incredible resource and I've contributed to your liquor fund. It's much appreciated!

My next step is to get a replacement fan. The single fan is still too loud for a living room so I'm looking into getting a quieter fan.

I'm also looking into getting a couple 10gbE cards. I was looking at the Mellanox MCX311A cards, but about all I can find on ebay come from China so I'll be waiting a month. Any alternative cards one can recommend that I might actually be able to find?

I also saw a comment to not use heatpaste on the heatsinks? And that the clips break easily? Being a 10 year old switch I thought it might be good to freshen it up, but not if it's going to cause problems.

This has been fun so far, thanks all!
 

aarcane

Member
Feb 16, 2016
35
1
8
39
I have not tried physically reversing the fans...but...I do know that the fan tray that connects (the two "tandem" fans each), to the switch has resistors in the wire/connector (on the fan side). That's how it knows if you put in a fan tray that's "front to back" or "back to front". You'll have to hack that as well.
Does anybody know the resister values, or have a guide for physically reversing the fan trays? Or perhaps more importantly, the psu? I could only get I models, but I need E for my rack configuration. I could just swap the fans and leave them reporting I, but that feels wrong and dirty.
 
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Serhan

Member
Sep 22, 2017
89
27
18
Which UPS do you use for models with POE? I tried APC 1500G and Vertiv PSA5 to power ICX7450-24P with no luck. These are 900W units as far as I know. I have three Omada POE APs connected to the switch. I measure 65 W at the wall and also on the UPS, both ups power on, but whenever I disconnect the mains, the switch shuts down.
 

fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
Nov 20, 2016
2,728
3,076
113
33
fohdeesha.com
Hi there!

It looks like I've joined the family! Two Tuesdays ago I saw a link to this thread on Reddit. I spent some time reading through this thread then immediately bought an ICX6450-48P off of ebay! I got it for the low price of $139 Canadian. No complaints there! What drew me to this particular switch was the 10gbE ports, the PoE, and the comment that the fan is "nearly silent" since this will be in my living room for now. I would prefer the 24 port version but none were available so 48 port it is!

It arrived by the Friday. It was in almost perfect condition save for a slight scratch across the top of the switch. Very clean inside too, components looked in good shape. The date stamped on the inside of the case was September 2012. I turned it on, and this thing was anything but "nearly silent" lol. I ended up pulling out my trusty rusty analog Radio Shack decibel meter. At three feet it was 80dB then when the fans spun down it dropped to 74dB! Disconnecting two of the fans it read 70dB at start, dropping to 65dB. Not living room friendly lol. I got a console cable on it and saw that the firmware version was 07.4.00dT31. So I hoped it was due to being an old firmware.

I started working through the guide but found the commands listed didn't work - I assume because of being an older firmware. I dug through the '?' menu until I found the commands that did what was needed, but I was unable to find a command to update the firmware with tftp. I had a look at the webui and saw there was an option to update the Primary with tftp. No option for uboot, so I told it to update the Primary and rebooted. Lo and behold the commands worked as listed. The best part: the fan is a LOT quieter now! I started the guide from the top and updated uboot, then went on to updating the PoE firmware and all the rest, and now I have a fully working, fully licensed 6450-48P. This is awesome! I'm going to learn a lot with this switch!

I've read through the first 100 pages of this thread, and the last 55 so far. I've learned a lot from everyone here, and enjoyed reading your adventures. So felt I should post mine! :D Fohdeesha, this is an incredible resource and I've contributed to your liquor fund. It's much appreciated!

My next step is to get a replacement fan. The single fan is still too loud for a living room so I'm looking into getting a quieter fan.

I'm also looking into getting a couple 10gbE cards. I was looking at the Mellanox MCX311A cards, but about all I can find on ebay come from China so I'll be waiting a month. Any alternative cards one can recommend that I might actually be able to find?

I also saw a comment to not use heatpaste on the heatsinks? And that the clips break easily? Being a 10 year old switch I thought it might be good to freshen it up, but not if it's going to cause problems.

This has been fun so far, thanks all!
thank you for the donation :) follow my guide linked in the original post here, starting from the beginning, don't skip anything. it won't matter what version your switch comes with, as the first thing it has you do is flash the latest software from the bootloader. If you're getting "commands not found" or missing, you skipped something somewhere. you shouldn't have ever even been in the actual OS yet, you should have been in the bootloader
 

Lone Wolf

Member
Apr 3, 2022
47
9
8
thank you for the donation :) follow my guide linked in the original post here, starting from the beginning, don't skip anything. it won't matter what version your switch comes with, as the first thing it has you do is flash the latest software from the bootloader. If you're getting "commands not found" or missing, you skipped something somewhere. you shouldn't have ever even been in the actual OS yet, you should have been in the bootloader
I did follow your guide command for command, step by step, skipping nothing. Booted the switch with a console cable, smashed 'b' until it dropped me to a prompt. Exactly as written - or I tried. But they were invalid commands. I rebooted the switch a couple of times to be sure I didn't miss the bootloader. I assume because of being on really old firmware? (version 07.4.00dT31 ) For example "setenv" was an unknown command so I couldn't set the ip. "update_primary" wasn't valid either. I used the '?' menu to pull up lists of commands and dug through the menus until I found different commands that let me set the IP. Once I did that, update_primary still didn't work because it was an unknown command but I could do it through the webui. Once I updated the primary and rebooted and smashed 'b' to get to the prompt, the commands in your guide worked exactly as listed and I was able to fully update and set up the switch. The guide was fantastic once I got to newer firmware, and it showed me what I needed to do to get to a newer firmware to be able to use the guide, so I consider it a resounding success! :D I'm only guessing it's due to older firmware, all I know is that the commands listed were unknown until I got to newer firmware. In the end tho, the switch works exactly as you described and your guide was very clear and easy to follow!
 
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Vesalius

Active Member
Nov 25, 2019
252
190
43
anyone use icx7150-48zp? which is better icx7250-24p or icx7150-48zp?
I use an icx7150-48zp and it's exactly as @kpflemming said. It's better for my needs as I wanted multigig POE for my ruckus r750&r650's and 10g in one switch. I also needed few more than 24 ports.
 

Freebsd1976

Active Member
Feb 23, 2018
387
73
28
I use an icx7150-48zp and it's exactly as @kpflemming said. It's better for my needs as I wanted multigig POE for my ruckus r750&r650's and 10g in one switch. I also needed few more than 24 ports.
How about The power consumption of Your 7150-48zp ? It seems higher than 7250 in the data sheet
 

fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
Nov 20, 2016
2,728
3,076
113
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fohdeesha.com
I did follow your guide command for command, step by step, skipping nothing. Booted the switch with a console cable, smashed 'b' until it dropped me to a prompt. Exactly as written - or I tried. But they were invalid commands. I rebooted the switch a couple of times to be sure I didn't miss the bootloader. I assume because of being on really old firmware? (version 07.4.00dT31 ) For example "setenv" was an unknown command so I couldn't set the ip. "update_primary" wasn't valid either. I used the '?' menu to pull up lists of commands and dug through the menus until I found different commands that let me set the IP. Once I did that, update_primary still didn't work because it was an unknown command but I could do it through the webui. Once I updated the primary and rebooted and smashed 'b' to get to the prompt, the commands in your guide worked exactly as listed and I was able to fully update and set up the switch. The guide was fantastic once I got to newer firmware, and it showed me what I needed to do to get to a newer firmware to be able to use the guide, so I consider it a resounding success! :D I'm only guessing it's due to older firmware, all I know is that the commands listed were unknown until I got to newer firmware. In the end tho, the switch works exactly as you described and your guide was very clear and easy to follow!
strange, the update commands have been in the production bootloaders since day one (which includes the 07.4.00 era bootloaders). I wonder if you got one of the development bootloaders I've ran into in the past, happened with one or two other members here who got their switches off ebay (which turned out to come from brocade's HQ in california)
 

Lone Wolf

Member
Apr 3, 2022
47
9
8
strange, the update commands have been in the production bootloaders since day one (which includes the 07.4.00 era bootloaders). I wonder if you got one of the development bootloaders I've ran into in the past, happened with one or two other members here who got their switches off ebay (which turned out to come from brocade's HQ in california)
Anything is possible. I know the first time I booted it up I did miss hitting 'b' at the time right time as I was talking with a co-worker. I rebooted and made sure I hit 'b' and got a prompt right away. When the commands didn't work, I rebooted yet again and watched to make sure I hit 'b' in time. Since the commands didn't work I had to update the firmware as I described above. When the switch rebooted after update I hit 'b' the same as before and the commands worked. So something changed lol.

With the 07.4.00 era bootloaders, did the fans stay loud or did they get quieter after it booted? Did the development ones stay loud? My fans dropped down to 70dB after boot, not the 37dB it listed in the manual. I'm curious now if I did get a development one lol
 

Jason Antes

Active Member
Feb 28, 2020
224
76
28
Twin Cities
strange, the update commands have been in the production bootloaders since day one (which includes the 07.4.00 era bootloaders). I wonder if you got one of the development bootloaders I've ran into in the past, happened with one or two other members here who got their switches off ebay (which turned out to come from brocade's HQ in california)
I've toured that HQ with a good friend at Brocade. It's quite the HQ.
 
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YEAHHWAY

New Member
Jan 7, 2021
5
1
3
Every time I get to the point where I want to use the following commands:

Code:
enable
copy tftp license 192.168.1.8 ICX6610-FCX/1-6610-ports.xml unit 1
copy tftp license 192.168.1.8 ICX6610-FCX/2-6610-adv.xml unit 1
copy tftp license 192.168.1.8 ICX6610-FCX/3-6610-macsec.xml unit 1
I get the following error message:

Code:
Copy Software License from TFTP to Flash copy stack Error: tftp timeout.
I have tried disabling the Windows firewall and allowing the tftpd64.exe through the firewall.

Has anyone else run into this problem?
 

fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
Nov 20, 2016
2,728
3,076
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fohdeesha.com
I'm assuming you're replacing the IP in the example commands with the IP of your pc running a tftp server? from the same cli level, run "ping xxx" with xxx being the ip of your tftp server, to see if it can ping (has basic connectivity) to your tftp pc
 

YEAHHWAY

New Member
Jan 7, 2021
5
1
3
I'm assuming you're replacing the IP in the example commands with the IP of your pc running a tftp server? from the same cli level, run "ping xxx" with xxx being the ip of your tftp server, to see if it can ping (has basic connectivity) to your tftp pc
I can ping the switch from my computer but not the other way around. I am using the correct IP for the tftp server, which is the computer's IP.