EXPIRED QuantaMesh BMS T4048-IX8 - Broadcom oem variant 6 x 100/ 48 x 25gbe switch for sub 600$

[Bartosz Grzelak]

I've been hunting for 100gbe switch for a while just to play with. And i have managed to find this switch. The person below sells it for a fraction of the original retail price.

Quanta IX8 BES-53248A1-G1-16E1 System 8 Bit Port Network Switch 115200 Baud Rate | eBay

I purchesed the same switch from another auction, for similar price. This one accepts offers so it can prabobly be even cheaper.
Those switches are custom Broadcom come variants of T4048-IX8. They run onie and Broadcom os. I can say from my initial play time, without the license the switch still works. However its limited to 16 ports only i think, to unlock the rest of the ports you need a license. Abviously that limitiation only applies when running Broadcom os. I havent tried putting sonic on it yet.

 

[ttvd]

How much power does this thing use?

 

[Bene11660]

Looks like a great deal, especially with ongoing software support.
I am also very interested in how much power they draw at idle.

 

[oneplane]

Did you try the debug commands on the serial port to generate free indefinite licenses for everything?

 

[Bartosz Grzelak]

Switch itself is semi loud. Power usage according to datasheet is 225w. I haven't checked real power consumption on my pdu yet. I wonder if with the other os'es it's possible to bring the usage down a bit and quiet the fans a little. But fans are blowing a lot of heat and there are a lot of them. In total there are 14 x 40mm fans, and they come in modules 2 per module. My switch came with back to front blowing configuration and I bet this one is the same.

 

[Bartosz Grzelak]

Did you try the debug commands on the serial port to generate free indefinite licenses for everything?

Not sure where would I find those commands?

 

[NablaSquaredG]

Thanks, ordered it.

 

[oneplane]

Not sure where would I find those commands?

Well, it depends on the firmware version(s), but almost everything based on the lower-level switchdrvr package from Broadcom from the LB6 and LB9 era is likely to have this:

(Switch) #dev sysapiDebugAdvanceLicenseKeyGenerate
(Switch) #reload

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/switch-licensing-hell.33574/page-2

While that was for QNOS, that NOS is mostly a modified version of the Broadcom reference kit, and the licensing all happens inside switchdrvr, which is a monolithic binary that handles the entire ASIC configuration, including feature control. So far it seems to work on PPC and X86 switches, but ARM would work all the same.

 

[Jaket]

Dang missed out would have been a nice unit for one of our techs to have to play with at his place.

 

[FlashLight]

I have one alive, almost new, and I can give away 4 more for restoration for a reasonable price

 

[linuxmanbg]

I have one alive, almost new, and I can give away 4 more for restoration for a reasonable price

Can you tell us USA or EU is located?

 

[FlashLight]

Can you tell us USA or EU is located?

Eu, but if you need it, I’ll send it to USA

 

[Brian Topping]

Hey if anyone on the thread is interested in SONiC NOS, I just cooked a build of 202511 (current for another few months) with full platform support for Quanta IX8. The last version I could find before this that worked is 202305, so 30 months older feature set.

PM me if you are interested. I'd push the PR, but they will ignore it. And I'd rather just meet people here instead...

 

[Bartosz Grzelak]

Hey Brian, I've just sent you pm about getting that image.

 

[jmb99]

Hey if anyone on the thread is interested in SONiC NOS, I just cooked a build of 202511 (current for another few months) with full platform support for Quanta IX8. The last version I could find before this that worked is 202305, so 30 months older feature set.

PM me if you are interested. I'd push the PR, but they will ignore it. And I'd rather just meet people here instead...

Any chance you feel like publishing a patch/diff here? I'm currently struggling to get 202511 with quanta support to build myself... I've gotten 202503 close, but a newer one would even be better.

 

[Brian Topping]

It's a lot of patches and diffs that would be far too difficult to share that way. I responded to DMs but never heard back.

The current state of the image is a previous build was busy waiting on a failed call to SWSS and running up the processor to 12 or something obnoxious. It runs, but it's probably not the best thing for it either. I have the new build, two switches at home now and should have time to do it this weekend.