"cheap" 40GbE switches - Celestica XP D4040 or Juniper QFX3600 (?)

[AveryFreeman]

Hey,

I've never worked with any QSFP+ switches before, but it seems like some fairly decent ones are starting to get pretty affordable on eBay.

There's the Mellanox stuff that can be had super cheap, but a lot of the pitfalls I've seen described on this forum make me apprehensive.

I came across a Celestica Smallstone XP D4040 on eBay that looks interesting, although it also looks very old and very loud. But it says it's 40GbE and it's QSFP+ which is what I guess I'm looking for ...

lol, some of the first hits I pulled up in Google say it's got an Atom C2538 with a stepping bug that cause them to die prematurely, fun times... Must be why their 100GbE model DX010 is going for less than $400 here: Celestica Seastone DX010 32-Port 100G QSFP28 ONIE Switch MFGR Date prior to 2018 | eBay

There's also a Juniper QFX3600, which I think looks kind of awesome (I read up on it pretty deeply). It's primarily meant for QFabric infrastructure, but says it can be used as a standard ethernet switch. It also looks very old and loud, and power consumption specs say an average of 255w (!) Would like to know if that's idle or average use load... (hopefully not idle...)

I am writing this to ask if anyone has used either of these switches themselves - how old ARE they? How LOUD are they? Done any power consumption readings? Would either one be decent for home use, or would my entire house sound like a perpetual jet engine?

 

[i386]

Is there a specific you choose these brands & models and not something from brocade or brocadearista?

There's the Mellanox stuff that can be had super cheap, but a lot of the pitfalls I've seen described on this forum make me apprehensive.

What pitfalls?

 

[LodeRunner]

I suspect the potential pitfall is the complexity of updating and unlocking some of them I suspect (the EMC > MLX conversion process).

That Celestica that was linked probably has an unpatched Atom C2000 (pre 2018 mfr date; Atom C2000 but fixed sometime in 2017 and took a while to roll out) which is why it's so cheap. If you're worried about dealing with a MLX switch then dealing with the (non-guaranteed) physical fix for the AVR54 bug is probably a no-go.

How many ports are you looking for? In Brocade, the 6610 gives you 2, the 6650 would give you 4? (There are 2 dedicated breakout ports on each switch; cannot be used as a 40G link). The 7750 series has either 6 or 26 ports (with an additional 6 port option module), but it's not receiving OS updates anymore as it has a different CPU than everything else in the 7xxx family.

I have an Arista DCS-7050QX-32s. There's a thread about them here along with a fan override command. It's not particularly louder than my ICX7450 or my Dell R720xd's (which are capped at 40% fan).

 

[thetoad]

its was insanely simple to take a $200 (off ebay) sx6036 (with 4 cables) and make it ethernet friendly. The only negatives I can say about mine is a) loud (working on a 40x20 fan swap) and the fact that either my rj45 serial port was broken or mellanox uses a different pinout from everyone else. (i.e. the serial cable I have that works with cisco at work and my old juniper ex2200 at home, wouldn't work with the sx6036). With that said, as I documented, I was able to figure out its ip and get in that way without serial console access.

 

[Tyrant82]

The only negatives I can say about mine is a) loud (working on a 40x20 fan swap).

I would love to swap my fans out on my MLX-SX6036, if you could share your findings, that would be awesome
I also need some newer revision power supplies. Because one has a very loud coil whine and the second is on a old revision, so maybe newer revision psu's are much quieter nowadays..

 

[thetoad]

I have no independent findings vs is what is already in forums here. See my post history I think I commented recently