Brocade ICX Series (cheap & powerful 10gbE/40gbE switching)
- Thread starter fohdeesha
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I found this thread searching for a switch with enough POE and SFP+ ports and so far these are awesome and many thanks to @fohdeesha for this thread.
So I thought I would post my fan experiences in trying to quiet down the ICX7250-24P switches. In my quest to mount the switch on my desk I found
nothing I tried from SAN ACE, Delta, SUNON, FXOCONN would get quiet enough once the switch booted up and set themselves without lots of coil whine to speed-1. I also found that by putting in slower spinning fans to quiet the system they also did not have enough static pressure to pull the air through the switch and it overheated or ran way to hot.
For the final solution I then opted to use 3 Noctua(NF-A4x20 FLX) quiet fans pulling the air out and one generic fan pushing air in directly over the switch controller heatsink and this seemed to solve the heat/noise issue in my case. I am only running 1 actual POE device currently with a handfull of fiber/ethernet connections and the temps have been stable around 41C(MGMT) and 49C(PSU).
Here is what I did in detail to my switches maybe it will help someone else
Cover modifications:
I cut a 60mm hole just over the controller heatsink for the 60x15mm fan (there is only 18mm clearance betwen the cover and heatsink). for the 4 holes i used the fan guard to estimate the hole placements.
Here you can see I cut out the existing vents holes to allow the most air flow and try to eliminate any turbulance noise. Then the 3rd hole (internal mount is already there) I used a 40mm hole saw to cut that out but I think I could have used a 38mm hole saw just fine.
I also put in a panel jack for the fan power so that I can use an external power supply that is adjustable that way I can adjust the fan speed/noise to my likeling. You can see that I had to cut a hole large enough for the jack to clear but I was a little off so i used a dremel to ream it out.
Wiring:
here you can see the panel jack wiring into the fan splitter which is 1 to 3 splitter. i just cut off an old fan plug then spliced it to the panel jack cables.
This next part is a little more complicated so opted to purchase some fan plugs/pins and crimped my own wires. I also had to use Two 3 wire fan extensions.
From the splitter to the fan extension wires you can see from the pics you have to make sure you wire the voltage directly to the fans then run the speed sensor wire to the motherboard. You also need to make sure that the ground from your fan power is tied to the motherboard and your fans othwise your fan speed will not be seen at the switch motherboard.
Since this was a generic fan and a little more noisy than the rest of the Noctua used a Noctua Y cable and a Noctua low noise cable I had from other fans to match the noise output of all 3 Noctua fans.
here is everything tucked away before putting it all back together.
After running it over night here is my temps and sound. The PSU is higher than I like but I might adress that later and maybe just put another 60mm fan there as well. The sound was taken right at the switch and then less than 3 feet away where my keyboard is and since my sound meter only goes down to 30db min it did not register.
So I thought I would post my fan experiences in trying to quiet down the ICX7250-24P switches. In my quest to mount the switch on my desk I found
nothing I tried from SAN ACE, Delta, SUNON, FXOCONN would get quiet enough once the switch booted up and set themselves without lots of coil whine to speed-1. I also found that by putting in slower spinning fans to quiet the system they also did not have enough static pressure to pull the air through the switch and it overheated or ran way to hot.
For the final solution I then opted to use 3 Noctua(NF-A4x20 FLX) quiet fans pulling the air out and one generic fan pushing air in directly over the switch controller heatsink and this seemed to solve the heat/noise issue in my case. I am only running 1 actual POE device currently with a handfull of fiber/ethernet connections and the temps have been stable around 41C(MGMT) and 49C(PSU).
Here is what I did in detail to my switches maybe it will help someone else
Cover modifications:
I cut a 60mm hole just over the controller heatsink for the 60x15mm fan (there is only 18mm clearance betwen the cover and heatsink). for the 4 holes i used the fan guard to estimate the hole placements.
Here you can see I cut out the existing vents holes to allow the most air flow and try to eliminate any turbulance noise. Then the 3rd hole (internal mount is already there) I used a 40mm hole saw to cut that out but I think I could have used a 38mm hole saw just fine.
I also put in a panel jack for the fan power so that I can use an external power supply that is adjustable that way I can adjust the fan speed/noise to my likeling. You can see that I had to cut a hole large enough for the jack to clear but I was a little off so i used a dremel to ream it out
.Wiring:
here you can see the panel jack wiring into the fan splitter which is 1 to 3 splitter. i just cut off an old fan plug then spliced it to the panel jack cables.
This next part is a little more complicated so opted to purchase some fan plugs/pins and crimped my own wires. I also had to use Two 3 wire fan extensions.
From the splitter to the fan extension wires you can see from the pics you have to make sure you wire the voltage directly to the fans then run the speed sensor wire to the motherboard. You also need to make sure that the ground from your fan power is tied to the motherboard and your fans othwise your fan speed will not be seen at the switch motherboard.
Since this was a generic fan and a little more noisy than the rest of the Noctua used a Noctua Y cable and a Noctua low noise cable I had from other fans to match the noise output of all 3 Noctua fans.
here is everything tucked away before putting it all back together.
After running it over night here is my temps and sound
. The PSU is higher than I like but I might adress that later and maybe just put another 60mm fan there as well. The sound was taken right at the switch and then less than 3 feet away where my keyboard is and since my sound meter only goes down to 30db min it did not register.I have a 6450-24P and 6450-48P in the mail to play with and ultimately be in a new home I'm building. The two units will be approximately 100 feet away from each other. The walls are open and I want to make a permanent connection to the two units now and treat them as stacked. However, I have absolutely no idea what type of cables I need to make this happen. Prior to running into this thread I already ran one CAT6 cable and a single fiber optic cable (specs say LC to LC OM3 Corning 10GB) which I now don't think is correct or complete.
1. Can someone guide me on what type of cable, how many and what other type of accessories I'll need to make this work. I am a complete novice when it comes to fiber, SFP+, the transceivers and other misc accessories and devices more common in data centers and enterprise environments.
2. Also can someone link to the appropriate console cable I'll need? I'm sure someone on Amazon or eBay has one that works with the 6450 but it seems so cryptic reading "DB9/RJ45" cable when searching Amazon and eBay. I have USB-A and thunderbolt3 on my laptop so I'm not sure if I need one part or two parts to be able to connect into the console and start my beef journey. I understand how to use screen to view the feed once connected just don't know the exact cable(s) needed.
1. Can someone guide me on what type of cable, how many and what other type of accessories I'll need to make this work. I am a complete novice when it comes to fiber, SFP+, the transceivers and other misc accessories and devices more common in data centers and enterprise environments.
2. Also can someone link to the appropriate console cable I'll need? I'm sure someone on Amazon or eBay has one that works with the 6450 but it seems so cryptic reading "DB9/RJ45" cable when searching Amazon and eBay. I have USB-A and thunderbolt3 on my laptop so I'm not sure if I need one part or two parts to be able to connect into the console and start my beef journey. I understand how to use screen to view the feed once connected just don't know the exact cable(s) needed.
1) you could run an active optical dac like this if indeed 100ft is enough
Otherwise I'd run 2 pairs of 2-6 strand fiber. Om3/4 will work, I prefer OS2. OM is multimode using leds, os is single mode using lasers. Om3 is good for 100gbps at 100 meters or less. OM4 is good for 100gbps at 150m or less. All overkill for 10gbps but you might as well. You will be using lc ends.
For transceivers, brocade doesn't care. Of course sfp+ which is up to 10gbps, and pay attention to light wavelength. Ie you will probably be using 850nm for your rin length. Each pair needs to use the same wavelength. You should also pair for the same distance, ie 30m.
Otherwise I'd run 2 pairs of 2-6 strand fiber. Om3/4 will work, I prefer OS2. OM is multimode using leds, os is single mode using lasers. Om3 is good for 100gbps at 100 meters or less. OM4 is good for 100gbps at 150m or less. All overkill for 10gbps but you might as well. You will be using lc ends.
For transceivers, brocade doesn't care. Of course sfp+ which is up to 10gbps, and pay attention to light wavelength. Ie you will probably be using 850nm for your rin length. Each pair needs to use the same wavelength. You should also pair for the same distance, ie 30m.
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Where is the good choice for buying OS2? I have no problem spending a bit more for being super future proof. If going OS2 would I still need a pair of the cable or is that only for OM3 and OM4 because they are "multimode"?
I'd do a pair of cables for redundancy/ future proofing. Ie one breaks. The number of strands is the same reasoning and the cable is cheap enough. Think of it like copper cabling, how many strands are there in Cat 6? However cat 6 needs 8 strands per link. Fiber CAN be one called bi directional but typically 2 strands per link. Buy pre terminated LC to LC duplex as your walls are open. Compare transceiver costs for OM3/4 and OS2 to determine whT you want to run for cables and trancievers. Is this all in wall? Riser/plenum, outside etc?I did not buy pre terminated but my house was finished, so it's ~$600 per drop to terminate via trustworthy techs.
FS.com website is well organized but seems like a generic website for Chinese switches and fake reviews. I still have had no problems with them, and generally the rep is helpful. I found a POE±+ 801.11bt switch I wanted but it's actually not bt and had to explain to the rep the issue. They kept the poe±+ wording though. I use it to find what I'm looking for often then buy used on ebay for personal, especially for nics.Feel free to pm me, we can discuss over phone as well.
FS.com website is well organized but seems like a generic website for Chinese switches and fake reviews. I still have had no problems with them, and generally the rep is helpful. I found a POE±+ 801.11bt switch I wanted but it's actually not bt and had to explain to the rep the issue. They kept the poe±+ wording though. I use it to find what I'm looking for often then buy used on ebay for personal, especially for nics.Feel free to pm me, we can discuss over phone as well.
You pretty much are doing what I did. I have ~300ft between two buildings and I ran 12 strand OS2 MTP fiber between the two buildings. I use a cassette to break it out on both sides to dual LC and plug that into the switch using LR transceivers. This future proofs me if I ever need more then 10Gbit or if I need additional runs.
You can look here to see https://www.fs.com/products/57016.html an example in their "10G Cable Trunking". I used the regular basic 1U mount with 1 cassette on each side. Make sure if you do cassette "Mode A" on one side and "Mode AF" on the other. The example is not a very sturdy cable as its just plenum rated and no protection.
I ran an industrial armoured cable to be sure (https://www.fs.com/products/70220.html) as it will be covered (in wall or in a conduit). You can customize it as needed and even put pull eyes on both sides. Just make sure the connector matches with the cassette if you are going that way. Most of the time you want MTP Female.
Good luck!
If you want to do something simpler, a single pair of SM fiber with simplex (not duplex) LC connectors and two pairs of this SFP+ (BiDi SFP+ 10GBase-LR Tx1270/Rx1330nm 10KM) will give you a full ring and nothing extra. If you like you can order the SFP+ transceivers with "Brocade coding" (that's what I did) but it's not strictly necessary.
This is an option as well just make sure if you are doing BiDi the one receiver is 1270/1330 and the other is 1330/1270 or else it will not work (you cannot get qty 2) you need to get a different receiver.
I am having TFTP issues setting up my second Brocade ICX 6610-48P. I had no issues getting my non POE 6610 up and running. I can get into the boot monitor and set my IP. the problem comes when i try to load things from the TFTP server running on my pc. It connects starts 4 transfer windows and times out on the brocade side. I will include my Wireshark log below. Any help would be great as I don't know what to do next.
Are the switch and the tftp server supposed to be on different subnets (is the box running the tftp server multi-homed or is there an intermediate router)? Does it work if the switch and the host running the tftp server are in the same subnet?
You use a pair because one is for sending and one is for receiving data.
You can also do both over a single fiber using different wavelengths, but that requires more expensive transceivers and makes it necessary for the transceivers on each end to be different (wavelengths swapped).
Turned out I forgot the cheap router was pushing everything into the 192.168.1.??? subnet while everything I had set up before was on the 192.168.0.??? subnet. they will send requests, but no packets will transfer. Set them both to the same subnet and everything worked properly.
random, never read this thread much, but hey thanks @fohdeesha for the resources, also pinout help for usb hax cable
power draw on 7250-48P
67w idle
70w idle with 2 optics (10g)
now disable 44 ports
your down to
58w idle
61w idle with 2 optics
almost 24 port numbers for power usage!
power draw on 7250-48P
67w idle
70w idle with 2 optics (10g)
now disable 44 ports
your down to
58w idle
61w idle with 2 optics
almost 24 port numbers for power usage!