Dell Networking


Dell Networking is the new name for the networking portfolio of Dell. In the first half of 2013, Dell started to re-brand their different existing networking product brands to Dell Networking. Dell Networking will be the new name for the networking-equipment that was known as Dell PowerConnect as well as the Force10 portfolio.

History

Dell used to be mainly a so-called box-shifter: they produced computers that could be bought directly from Dell, but they didn't offer complete solutions. With the acquisition of Perot Systems Dell entered the market for the -more profitable- services market and also expanded on the software and system-management-market by buying KACE Networks, Quest Software, AppAssure and Credant Technologies. Other notable acquisitions include storage systems like EqualLogic, thin-client producer Wyse and firewall/security producer SonicWall.

Networking

In 2011, Dell took over high-end network-equipment producer Force10 Networks that mainly produces multi-layer switches for data center environments and with that step Dell entered the market for network equipment. Until then Dell didn't have their own network equipment: the switches that were sold under the brand PowerConnect were products designed and built -for Dell- by 3rd parties such as Broadcom and Marvell Technology Group. And Dell also offered existing products from other suppliers with a 'PowerConnect' sticker on it like the B-series for Brocade switches or J-series for Juniper switches. But by buying Force10 and later network-security provider SonicWall the company now has its own intellectual property networking systems and stopped selling most J- and B-series switches but continued to offer the legacy PowerConnect products made by Broadcom and Marvell with some overlap in the Force10 products.
In 2013 Dell has started the process to fully integrate these two product lines and rebrand the entire portfolio into Dell Networking, all running on Dell Networking Operating System. All new networking products will be marketed under the new name Dell Networking with a standardized naming-convention: Dell Networking -. Most existing PowerConnect products will keep their existing names until they will go 'end of sales' when they are replaced by new Dell Networking products or will be rebranded to the new naming convention.

Product families

The Dell Networking products will come in several families. The new naming system will partially follow the existing Force10 naming system: E-series for chassis-based modular switches, C-series for chassis-based datacenter-access switches, S-series rack switches and Z-series for distributed core-switches.
Below is an overview of the current portfolio of Dell Networking switches, including active models under the PowerConnect name. For legacy switches that are no longer being sold please check the Dell PowerConnect page and for non-ethernet Force10 products check the Force10 product page.

Dell PowerConnect

The current portfolio of Dell PowerConnect rack switches consists of the following series:
The PowerConnects 2800, 3500 and 5500 are based on Marvell Technology Group equipment while the PowerConnect 6200, 7000, 8100 and the blade-switches PCM6220, PCM6348 and PCM8024 are powered by Broadcom

PowerConnect 2800

The Dell Networking PCT2800 web-managed switches are entry-level Ethernet switches that only offer a web-based GUI management interface. There are 4 models offering between 8 and 48 ports per switch. The interfaces on the switches are all copper-based gigabit Ethernet-ports and the 24 and 48 ports switches offer 2 or 4 'combo' ports where the last 2 ports can use either the RJ45/UTP 1000BaseT copper-interface or a fiber SFP transceiver for uplinks to a distribution or core switch. All switches offer standard features like VLANs, link-aggregation, auto-negotiation for speed- and duplex setting. The MAC address-table can hold up to 8000 MAC addresses in its forwarding table and have a 2Mb packet-buffering capacity

PowerConnect 3500

The PowerConnect 3500 series switches are Ethernet access-switches which comes in 4 models: the PCT3524 and PCT3548 with 24 resp 48 10/100Mb ethernet ports and the PCT3524P / PCT3548P with 24 or 48 10/100Mb with PoE option to power VOIP phones, Wifi Access-points or IP camera's.
All models can be provided with a redundant power supply for either pure redundant power or to provide a full PoE power budget for the 48 ports PoE switch. The technical specifications of the 'non-PoE' and the 'PoE' models are the same in regards to switching capabilities and the main difference between the 24 and 48 port models is the total forwarding rate of the switch: 12,8Gbit/s for both 24 port models and 17,6 Gbit/s for the 48 port models. As with the PCT2800 models the MAC address table can hold up to 8000 MAC addresses.
Apart from all standard layer2 switching capabilities as VLAN's, link aggregation ports for high-speed uplinks to distribution or core switches or for stacking of switches and two gigabits SFP ports for a 1Gbit/s fiber transceiver for uplinks to distribution/core layer.

PowerConnect 5500

The PowerConnect 5500 series switches are gigabit ethernet access-switches, available in 4 models: either a 24 or 48 port gigabit ethernet switch or a 24/48 port gigabit ethernet switch with power-over-ethernet option. Regardless of the model, the switches offer two HDMI ports for stacking and two SFP+ 10Gbit transceiver ports for 10Gb uplinks.
The technical specifications of the 4 models are all the same, except for the number of ports and the PoE feature and the total switching capacity of 128 Gbit/s or 176 Gbit/s with a MAC address table size of 16.000 entries, up to 4000 VLAN's, support for link-aggregation, VLAN tagging, dot1x security, and dynamic VLAN assignment, etc.
Although the switches are mainly layer2 ethernet switches they do offer some IP features like static routing, IP or MAC-based access-lists, DHCP snooping, quality of service options and IGMP features. Up to 8 switches out of the 5500 series can be stacked, using the built-in HDMI stack-ports, to form one logical switch. The switch also offers special features for a voice-VLAN as well as extensive options for dot1x security and dynamic VLAN assignment via RADIUS or TACACS+ server. For better energy efficiency the switch also offers Energy Efficient Ethernet or EEE allowing the switch to negotiate a lower link-speed on access-interfaces when the connected client doesn't require the full bandwidth, and when the connected client requires more bandwidth than the active link speed it will negotiate a higher speed. The PCT5500 series support Spanning-tree, Rapid Spanning-tree, and Multiple spanning-tree. The default setting is rapid-spanning tree.
Other features offered by the PCT5500 series is port-mirroring, jumbo-frame support, dynamic ARP inspection, IGMP snooping, private VLAN configuration, LLDP/LLDP-MED, management-access-lists, etc.
The two PoE enabled switches can offer up to 15,4 Watt of power to each of the 24 or 48 copper gigabit interfaces. To provide power to more than 24 ports you need to install an extra 'redundant power supply' on the PCT5548P. In case one of the power-supplies would fail you can set PoE priorities to continue to give PoE power to most important devices and switch-off less important in cases where your power-budget is smaller than required budget.

Managed Multi-layer gigabit ethernet switches

Dell Networking offers two main-models for layer3 gigabit ethernet rack switches: the PowerConnect 6200 series and the PowerConnect 7000 series. In regards to available models for the number of ports, PoE support, and copper/fiber the PCT6200 and PCT7000 models are very similar. The basic features of both models are also very alike, but the PCT7000 series offer a range of additional features that are not available in the PCT6200. Some important differences between the PCT6200 and PCT7000 are that the PCT7000 offers a dedicated 'out-of-band' management interface. Although both switches are stackable: you can only stack either PCT6200 models or PCT7000 models in a single stack. The only exception is that it is possible to combine the PCT7000 series with the blade-switch PCM6348 in a single stack..

Common features

The PCT6200 series is the first real 'multilayer switch' and the PCT7000 is a more advanced and powerful multi-layer switch. But for both models the following characteristics apply: besides the basic IP features offered by the PCT5500 the PCT6200 series are real multi-layer switches offering dynamic routing features like RIP and OSPF. The PCT6200/PCT7000 series offer either 24 or 48 port switches with a PoE enabled variant on both the 24 and 48 port. And there are also switches offering 24 SFP interfaces for an all-fiber network and/or to let the "-F series" switch be used as a distribution or core level with uplinks to remote access-switches via a fiber-optic link.
Each of the models offers 24+4 or 48+4 ports on the front-side of the switch where the last 4 ports are so-called 'combo ports': for the 'copper' based switches there is an option to connect up to four fiber links using an SFP transceiver instead of the corresponding RJ45 copper interfaces. And on the PCTxx24F up to four RJ45 UTP ports can be used.
On the back-side of each model, there are two extension-module bays that can be used for stacking or for 10Gbit uplinks offering two SFP+ transceiver ports. When stacking the PowerConnect series switches you must install the stacking module in bay1.

Differences

Some of the most obvious differences between the PCT6200 models and the PCT7000 models are:
Modelswitch capacityforwarding rateMAC address table lengthLAG support Dynamic LAG ACL support
6224/6224P/6224F136Gbit/s95 Mpps8000128 links8 LACP groups100 lists/127 entries/list
6248/6248P184Gbit/s131Mpps8000128 links8 LACP groups100 lists/127 entries/list
7024 176Gbit/s125Mpps32.00072 groups/8 links/group72 groups/8 links/group100 lists, 1K rules/list, 8K total
7048 224Gbit/s160Mpps32.00072 groups/8 links/group72 groups/8 links/group100 lists, 1K rules/list, 8K total

[|PowerConnect 8100]

The latest addition on the PowerConnect portfolio is the Powerconnect 8132 and 8164 offering up to 32 or 64 10GbaseT or SFP+ ports. The 8164 also offers built-in two QSFP+ 40Gb ports. All the PCT8100 models have one expansion slot allowing to insert a dual QSFP+ port for two 40Gb interfaces or -with a break-out cable- 2 x 4 x SFP+ 10Gbit/s ports
Once you update a PCT8100 to [|firmware] level 6.0 or later it is renamed to N4000 model.
The PowerConnect 8100 series switches announced in 2012 offered 24 or 48 ports on 10Gb and 0 or 2 built-in ports for 40 Gb QSFP ports. All models also have one extension-module slot with either two QSFP 40Gb ports, 4 SFP+ 10Gb ports or 4 10GbaseT ports. It is a small switch with a high port-density and can be used as distribution or core switch for campus networks and for use in the datacenter it offers features such as loss-less ethernet for iSCSI and FCoE, data center bridging and iSCSI Auto-configure
The PCT8100 series is a "multi-layer" switch which can be used as either a "pure" layer-2 ethernet-switch or as a "layer-3" switch with extensive IP routing functions. Most routing is done in hardware and can be done at wire-speed. Management can be done via the "out-of-band" ethernet interface or "in-band" by connecting to one of the vlan-ip addresses. Management is possible via HTTP, telnet, SSH or even serial console cable.
Model10GbaseT
SFP+
QSFP
#modulesmax.nr 10Gb portspower consumption'
81322400132240 W
8132F0240132176 W
81644802164395 W
8164F0482164220 W

Up to 6 units in the 8100 series can be stacked to form one logical switch and any type of interface can be used for stacking. Similar to the rack-switches PCT7000 and PCT8024 series the switch offers an out-of-band fast-ethernet port for management as well as a serial console connection, required for initial configuration. The switch is built around the Broadcom Trident+ ASIC: the same ASIC as can be found in Cisco Nexus 5000 switches or Force10 models. The PowerConnect 8100 is initially released with firmware 5.0 of the switch-firmware which offers the [|same features] as the PowerConnect 7000 and 8024 rack-switches and the different M-series Ethernet switches.
The underlying operating system of the PCT8100 is based on Linux 2.6 where all other 'Broadcom powered' PowerConnects run on VxWorks.

Dell Networking H series

The Dell Networking H-series is really an OEM version of Intels' Omni-Path platform, which itself is an alternative for InfiniBand. When managing an OmniPath network many commands are very similar to Infiniband switches.

Dell Networking [|N series]

The N-series switches come in 3 groups:

N1500: Gigabit layer2 switches

The N1500 offers a low budget step in the model compared to the N2000. The N1500 doesn't have dedicated stacking-ports but you can convert 10G ethernet uplink ports to stacking-ports and stack multiple N1500's together.

N2000: Gigabit layer2 switches

The N2000 is an Ethernet switch with limited IP capabilities. There are two 'sizes': 24 x 1GbaseT or 48 x 1GBaseT ports and each of them available as POE+ or standard switch. All models in the N20xx series can be stacked with other models in the same series. Although they do use the same stacking-cables as the N3000 series it is NOT possible to stack N2000 with N3000 switches. All models come with 2 x 10Gbase SFP+ uplink ports and two 'tweeting' stacking ports at the back. Management can be done by assigning an IP address to switch or one of the VLAN-interfaces. The N2000 is marketed as the follow-up for the legacy PowerConnect 5500 models as well as the Force10 S25 and S50 models.
It is also possible to convert an N2000 series switch to a port-extender for the new C9010 platform. An N2048P would then have exact same features as the 'standard' C1048P port-extender: but for other port-numbers or when you want NO POE support you can convert N2000 switches to port-extenders. But the main reason to do it is to avoid losing investment in your N-series access-platform when moving to the C9010 chassis-based platform with one single point of management.

N3000: Gigabit multi-layer switches

The N3000 is hardware-wise pretty similar to the N2000 series but the OS offers advanced IP capabilities. Besides the 4 model choices as in N2000 there is also the N3024F which offers 24 x SFP 1G ports.
Unlike the N2000 series, the N3000 has 'combo-ports': All 'copper' based switches offer 2 SFP 1Gb fiber ports and the N3024F offers two 1 GbaseT RJ45 combo ports. All N3000 series switches also offer two SFP+ 10Gb uplink ports. Optionally you can add a module for another two SFP+ ports or two 10GBaseT RJ45 ports. Stacking can be done via the built-in 'twenty gig' ports and for management, you can use an out-of-band 1G Ethernet management port. The N3000 series is the follow-up for the legacy PowerConnect 6200 and 7000 series as well as the Force10 S50/S55 switches.
It is also possible to convert an N3000 series switch to a port-extender for the new C9010 platform. An N3048P would then have exact same features as the 'standard' C1048P port-extender: but for other port-numbers or when you want NO POE support or 1G fiber you can convert N3000 switches to port-extenders. But the main reason to do it is to avoid losing investment in your N-series access-platform when moving to the C9010 chassis-based platform with one single point of management.

N4000: 10Gbit multi-layer switches

The N4000 series is the new name for the former PowerConnect 8100 series switch and any PCT8100 that is upgraded to a firmware above 6.0.0.0 will be renamed to an N40xx series switch. There are four main models: N4032F and N4064F with standard 24 or 48 x 10G SFP+ ports, 0 or 2 built-in QSFP+ ports and one module bay; and N4032 and N4064 with 24 or 48 x 10GbaseT RJ45 ports, 0 or 2 built-in QSFP+ ports, and one module bay. Each QSFP+ port can be split in a 4 x SFP+ port using a break-out cable. In the module bay, you can insert either a two-port QSFP+, a 4 x 10GBaseT or a 4 x SFP+ module.
Stacking can be done via 10G or 40G ports and you can 'mix and match' the different N40xx series switches in a single stack. Management can be done 'in-band' or via the dedicated out-of-band 1Gb Ethernet interface. See also above section on the PowerConnect 8100 series for model-details.

Datacenter switches

The former Force10 switches are now known as Dell Networking switches, but the model naming will be very similar to the old model naming in Force10:

Dell Networking [|S series]

The current portfolio of Force10 switches can be split into two main ranges: existing S25, S50, S55, and S60 one gigabit rack-switches which are layer2 or multilayer access-switches and the S4810, S4820T and the new S5000 series.
The existing Force10 S-series datacenter bridges will be extended with the S5000 series modular switch. The S5000 will be a modular switch that can support 48 x 10Gb Ethernet ports + 4 x 40Gb QSFP ethernet or stacking ports.
The main difference between the S4810 or S4820T series switches is that the S5000 is modular: you can start with fewer ports and the 2nd big change is that it will be able to have native 8Gb fibre channel ports modules, allowing to connect directly to a native fiber-channel switch. Like other switches in the DN S-series, the S5000 will support stacking and also Virtual Link Trunking: allowing you to create an LACP port-channel from another switch or even server that terminates on two different switches.
The S5000 is targeted for data center networking as either a 10G access-switch or a datacenter distribution switches. It can also be used as core switch in smaller data centers. It fully supports Data Center Bridging and can also be used as FCoE or Fibre Channel switch by using a FC interface module. It provides full FC logic allowing one to directly connect FC based SAN's to the switch to fully support FCoE or Converged Networking in combination with the other 10G switches in the Dell Networking range.
The latest S6000 is marketed as either a core or spine switch in a medium-sized datacenter or a leaf switch for large datacenters. The S6000 offers 32 x 40Gb QSFP interfaces which can be 'split' into 4 x 10Gb by using either splitter direct-attached-cable or optical splitter cables with a maximum of 96 10G SFP+ ports and 8 remaining 40Gb ports. The S6000 is based on the Broadcom Trident2 ASIC

Dell Networking Z-series

Dell Networking Z-series has two models of high-capacity switches in a 2U or 3U form-factor. The original Z9000 offers 32 line-rate 40Gb QSFP ports while the new Z9500 offers 132 x 40Gb QSFP+ ports. It is possible to buy the Z9500 with only a number of the interfaces actually enabled and via additional licenses to be bought at a later moment in time datacenter owners can spread the investment with the growth of the traffic-demand.
Both switches are designed to be the 'spine' in a spine-leaf distributed core network-design and with the VLT technology fully redundant topologies can be built where two switches share the data pane but have independent management.

Dell Networking chassis-based switches

Besides the range of campus and datacenter top-of-rack form-factor switches Dell also offers two ranges of chassis-based product lines: the C-series and the E-series.
The C-series are rebranded to the Dell model-number naming: one letter followed by 4 digits while the E-series has not seen any name-change.
see main-article on Force10 chassis based switches