Dell VEP/VMWare Edge/Velo Cloud SD-WAN/VeraCloud VEP1400/VEP1400-X firewall units

[paykuh]

You already got it working, but if you press the button on the PCB closes to then power plug long enough, the device will power off.
When powered on again, all interfaces will be available.

This doesn't seem to work for me. I acquired 2 Dell VEPs from scrap when I worked at Dell from one of the labs, so I am wondering if I have some sort of experimental build. Reading thru this thread, it seems my units are completely different from everyone else. Mine are just branded "DELL EMC" with no Model #, none of the firmware updates from Dell's website work on it, and also, those 2 buttons people are pressing that are by the power button... on mine, the buttons on are on the opposite part of the board, near the SFP ports, pressing the one closest to the SFP port does nothing, and the one furthest away from the SFP port just reboots the module.

In OPNsense, I am only able to see ix0 and ix1, which are the SFP ports. I have RJ45 SFPs in them, and when I connect either of them to my PC I get a link light, but when I connect them to my WAN / switch I get no link. So I'm assuming something odd is happening with speed negotiating. Any who, I'll probably end up tinkering with them for a few more hours. I've spent countless hours already trying to get them to work already.. they'll probably end up on eBay by the end of the week.

 

[nmpu]

This doesn't seem to work for me. I acquired 2 Dell VEPs from scrap when I worked at Dell from one of the labs, so I am wondering if I have some sort of experimental build. Reading thru this thread, it seems my units are completely different from everyone else. Mine are just branded "DELL EMC" with no Model #, none of the firmware updates from Dell's website work on it, and also, those 2 buttons people are pressing that are by the power button... on mine, the buttons on are on the opposite part of the board, near the SFP ports, pressing the one closest to the SFP port does nothing, and the one furthest away from the SFP port just reboots the module.

In OPNsense, I am only able to see ix0 and ix1, which are the SFP ports. I have RJ45 SFPs in them, and when I connect either of them to my PC I get a link light, but when I connect them to my WAN / switch I get no link. So I'm assuming something odd is happening with speed negotiating. Any who, I'll probably end up tinkering with them for a few more hours. I've spent countless hours already trying to get them to work already.. they'll probably end up on eBay by the end of the week.

Can you enter the BIOS? If so, post a terminal capture. Would also be interesting to see photos of the PCB. Please don't confuse the poor eBay buyers. They'll be back posting on this same forum. The preferred units are non-N 640/680 (620 if really cheap) or maybe the 510 LTE which was recently $17.49 NIB.

 

[TrevorH]

I don't understand why these things are so cheap in the USA and so expensive over here in .uk. I checked Ebay UK and the cheapest there is a 640 for £360 (US$480) and there are barely any others for sale - which probably explains why they're so expensive.

 

[nmpu]

This is more than I would pay, but here's some Edge 680s for $175 BIN or BO. No 256GB SATA SSD or power supply.

$100 x3 offer was auto-rejected.

 

[cvmagic]

Long time lurker, first time contributing to a thread. Picked up an Edge 610 on ebay last week, wanted to get the ethernet ports to work on Debian. Spent some time poking around and a few tokens with ChatGPT but managed to get the switch chip configured and the 6 ethernet ports accessible. You will have to build your kernel with DSA support, and use a custom kernel module to bitbang configure the Marvell switch chip. If you want to give it a try yourselves I have the generalized version of the code linked below.

GitHub - CVMagic/edge610: Kernel modules and scripts to enable general use of ethernet ports and disable watch dog on the SD-WAN Edge 610. This project was created with the assistance of an LLM.

Kernel modules and scripts to enable general use of ethernet ports and disable watch dog on the SD-WAN Edge 610. This project was created with the assistance of an LLM. - CVMagic/edge610

github.com

Note, it is possible to bitbang configure the switch chip with only user level code, but it will be limited to bridging between the host ports and the ethernet ports on the front, if that sounds like it would work for you, let me know and publish that one too. I have only tried this with Debian Trixie, but my goal was to set this up on VyOS which is why I started with Debian directly.

 

[Kirby perkins]

Awesome teardown photos, thanks for sharing! Seeing 48GB ECC SODIMM boot up on a 680 is wild for a box this size. Definitely makes these surplus units a lot more tempting