PowerConnect is a Dell series of network switches. The PowerConnect "classic" switches are based on Broadcom or Marvell Technology Group fabric and firmware. Dell acquired Force10 Networks in 2011 to expand its data center switch products.[1] Dell also offers the PowerConnect M-series which are switches for the M1000e blade-server enclosure and the PowerConnect W-series which is a Wi-Fi platform based on Aruba Networks.
The Dell PowerConnect line is marketed for business computer networking. They connect computers and servers in small to medium-sized networks using Ethernet. The brand name was first announced in July 2001, as traditional personal computer sales were declining.[2] By September 2002 Cisco Systems cancelled a reseller agreement with Dell.[3] Previously under storage business general manager Darren Thomas, in September 2010 Dario Zamarian was named to head networking platforms within Dell.[4]
PowerConnect switches are available in pre-configured web-managed models as well as more expensive managed models.
Models 2216 and 2224 were unmanaged, 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet over twisted pair switches, with 16 and 24 ports each, respectively. They were discontinued. The PowerConnect 2324 was similar to 2224, but includes 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports for uplink or server purposes.
The PowerConnect 2600 series included the 2608, 2616 and 2624. They are un-managed Gigabit Ethernet workgroup switches with all ports at 10/100/1000. The 2624 model features an SFP port for fiber uplinks. They too are discontinued.
The PowerConnect 27xx series of switchers were Web managed all-Gigabit workgroup switches (10/100/1000). Eight, 16, 24, or 48 ports respectively. Switches shipped in a plug-n-play un-managed mode and can be managed via a graphical user interface. They are discontinued.
Dual-mode unmanaged or Web managed all-Gigabit workgroup switches (10/100/1000). Eight, 16, 24, or 48 ports respectively. On the 2824 and 2848, there are an additional 2 small form-factor pluggable transceiver (SFP) modules, for fiber-optic connectivity. Switches ship in a plug-n-play un-managed mode and can be managed via a graphical user interface.
PowerConnect 3424, 3424P, 3448, and 3448P were fully managed 10/100 switches with gigabit uplinks. All have four Gigabit ports, two copper and two SFP modular, all of which may be used at once. The 3424 and 3424P have 24 10/100 ports, the 3448 and 3448P have 48. The 3424P and 3448P provide power over Ethernet on all 10/100 ports (PowerConnect 3448P requires EPS-470 for full 15.4W on all ports simultaneously). The switches are stackable using the copper Gigabit ports. They were discontinued.
PowerConnect 3524(P) and 3548(P) are managed 10/100 switches with gigabit uplinks and Power over Ethernet options for [applications such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), denoted on the models denoted with a "P" on the end of the part number. All switches in this family support resilient stacking and have management and security capabilities.
The PowerConnect 5316M was similar in software and function to other 53xx series switches but physically designed to fit one of the four IO bays in the 1855/1955 blade chassis. 16 ports, 10 of which are allocated to the 10 blade slots in the chassis, 6 are accessible via the back panel of the switch. It was discontinued.
The PowerConnect 5324 was a 24 port, all-Gigabit, fully managed switch. The last 4 ports are SFP capable. Generally very similar to the 3400 series. It was discontinued.
The 5400 series switches are end of development and were replaced by the 5524 and 5548 switches. PowerConnect 5400 series are based on integrated circuits from Marvell Technology Group. 5400 series switches have 24 or 48 ports, all-Gigabit, and are fully managed. They are marketed for data centers or as edge-switches in wiring closets connecting office-workplaces to the LAN including their VoIP phone via Power over Ethernet (PoE). The last 4 ports on the switch are combo-ports: either you use the standard copper-ports or you use the SFP slots for 1Gbit/s SFPs. The front of the switch has 24/48 RJ-45 copper-interfaces and 4 open SFP slots.
The -P models support PoE) on all Gigabit Ethernet ports, but an external additional power supply is used to connect over 24 PoE devices on the 5448-P switch. The 5400 series switches support:[5]
PowerConnect 5500 series switches, the successor of the 5400 series, are based on Marvell technology. They offer 24 or 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports with (-P series) or without PoE. Where the 5400 series has 4 ports for SFP tranceivers on the front and the option to place 2 stacking or 10 Gigabit ports on the back, the 5500 series have these interfaces built in and on the front: there are two stacking ports with HDMI connectors and two SFP+ slots for 10 Gigabit Ethernet links.
The -P models have Gigabit Ethernet ports that are PoE capable, but connecting more than 24 ports with PoE requires the MPS-600 external power-supply together with the built-in AC power-supply. Using the MPS-600 makes the power supply redundant (although you can only power up to 24 PoE devices when one of the two power-supplies fail.). For redundant power supply on the non-PoE devices you can use the RPS-series redundant power supply in combination with the built-in supply.
The 5500 series are stackable to combine several 5500-series switches into one virtual switch. The 5500 series uses standard HDMI cables (specification 1.3a category 2 or better) to stack with a total bandwidth of 40 Gbit/s per switch. All 5500 series models can be combined in a single stack.[6]
The 5500 series switches are mainly designed to be pure layer 2 switches but it has some very basic layer 3 capabilities. Other standard features are enhanced VOIP support where the switch automatically recognizes connected VOIP devices and configure VOIP quality of service and a VOIP-VLAN. This feature will only work optimally in small VOIP networks. There is also iSCSI optimization and auto-configuration. The switch also supports IEEE 802.1X (Dot1x) port-authetication.[7]
The PowerConnect 6024 with 24 Gigabit Ethernet over twisted pair ports was annonced in early 2004.[8]
The PowerConnect 6024F was a 24 port, layer 3, all-Gigabit, fiber-optimized switch. It had 24 SFP ports, eight of which doubled as copper ports. This switch was capable of routing, with static routes, Routing Information Protocol (RIP), and Open Shortest Path First (OSPF). It was replaced by the PowerConnect 6224/6248 models
The 6224 and 6248 switch was introduced in early 2007 as the logical follow-up of the 6024 switch. It had 24 (6224) or 48 (6248) Gigabit Ethernet ports and two sockets for 10 Gigabit Ethernet modules (with two ports per module) or stacking.[9]
Many of the Dell PowerConnect offer 'combi' ports where the last 4 ports on the switch are either copper (UTP/RJ-45) or fibre (SFP) ports: for example the PC6224 offers 20 'copper only' interfaces while ports 21-24 can be found twice on the front of the switch: as standard UTP ports and also as SFP slots, but you can only use one of them: by default the UTP port is enabled but when you insert a SFP module in port 21-24 it switches over to fibre mode and the UTP link goes down. Any combo ports are always the highest 4 standard ports (21-24 on the PCxx24 models and 45-48 on PCxx48 models)
Features include 24/48 ports, Layer 3 routing, all-gigabit, fully managed (web+cli), stackable switch with up to 4 10Gb ports. High availability routing, edge connectivity, traffic aggregation and VOIP applications all supported in the 62xx series. Flexible, high-speed stacking, fiber support, and MS NSP Certification included.
The 6224 (P and F) and 6248P series switches are end of development: new firmware versions will only repair bugs, no new features are being developed for these switches. While other PowerConnect switches based on Broadcom hardware have firmware versions 4.x, the 6200 series continue to run on version 3.x and features introduced in the 4.x firmware are not available for the 6200 series switches.[10][11](note: this does NOT apply to the PCM 6220 blade-switch)
The PowerConnect 7024 and 7048 were introduced April 1, 2011. They had the same ports as the 6224/6248, QoS features for iSCSI, and incorporate 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet. A variant with reversible air flow is available for top of rack data center applications. The 6000 series remained on the market.[12]
The PowerConnect 8024 and 8024F are rack-mounted switches offering 10 Gigabit Ethernet on copper or optical fiber using enhanced small form-factor pluggable transceiver (SFP+) modules on the 8024F. On the 8024 the last 4 ports (21-24) are combo-ports with the option to use the 4 SFP+ slots to use fiber optic connections for longer-distance uplinks to core switches. On the 8024F the 4 combo ports offer 10GBASE-T copper-ports.
The 8024 can be used as pure Data Link Layer/Layer2 switch or as Network Layer/Layer3 switch. These switches were introduced in early 2010, in the same single rack unit (1U) size.[13]
For the Dell M1000e blade-enclosure Dell offers the PCM8024-k. Its pedecessor PCM8024 is declated end-of-life in Q4 of 2011. There is also a PCM8428 blade-switch but that is an entirely different FCoE switch from Brocade with both 10 Gb enhanced ethernet and 8Gb fibre channel interfaces.
With the latest firmware available in December 2011, the Powerconnect 8024(-F) and the blade-versions PCM8024-k (thus NOT the discontinued PCM8024) can be stacked. Stacking is done by assigning (multiple) 10Gb ethernet ports as stacking-ports. Up to six 80xx series switches can be stacked. You can mix PCT8024 and PCT8024-F in one stack, but it can't be combined with a PCM8024-k blade. The original and now discontued PCM8024 doesn't support stacking.
The PowerConnect M-series switches are classic Ethernet switches based on Broadcom fabric for use in the blade server enclosure M1000e.
All M-series switches offer a combination of internal interfaces and external interfaces. The internal interfaces connect to the mezzanine card of the blade-servers in the M1000e enclosure. These internal interfaces can be one or 10 Gbit/s. The M6220 offers a total of 20 interfaces: 16 internal 1 Gbit/s interfaces and 4 external 1 Gbit/s ports. Optionally two extension-modules can be installed that offers 10 Gbit/s ethernet or stacking-interfaces to stack multiple M6220 switches together as one virtual switch.[14] The M6348 has 32 internal ports (2 per blade) and 16 external 1 Gbit/s ports. The M6348 can be stacked via CX4 modules and/or create 10 Gbit/s SFP+ uplinks.[15] The M8000 series offer 10Gb on all interfaces: the M8024-k has 16 internal 10Gb ports, 4 SFP+ slots and the option to install a FlexIO module that can offer 4 SFP+ ports, 3 CX-4 or 2 10GBaseT copper interfaces.[14] The M8024-k was announced in May 2011.[16]
With the the recent firmware upgrade announced in December 2011, the M8024-k is also an Fibre Channel over Ethernet(FCoE) transit switch that can be attached to an external converged data center network to extend an available FCoE fabric. The M8024-k uses FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP) to perform functions of FC_BB_E device discovery, initialization and maintenance. The FIP snooping feature enables the M8024-k to link Dell M-Series blades to an external top-of-rack or end-of-row FCoE forwarding switch and provides FCoE connectivity to the servers. This feature, along with Internet SCSI optimization, iSCSI TLV, and DCBx discovery and monitoring, enables seamless 10GbE performance in an end-to-end data center solution. In addition, with the recent firmware release, up to 6 M8024-k switches can now be stacked and managed through a single IP. Stacking is done by assigning (multiple) 10Gb ethernet ports as stacking-ports.[17]
Also under the M-series name Dell offers the Brocade Communications Systems M5424 8Gb Fibre Channel switch and the M8428-k Converged 10GbE Switch which offers 10GbE performance, FCoE switching, and low-latency 8 Gb Fibre Channel (FC) switching and connectivity. [18]
Other switches and I/O modules for the M1000e blade-enclosure are the Cisco Systems 3032 and 3130 switches and several pass-through modules that bring the internal interfaces from the midplane to the exterior to connect these server-NIC's to external switches[19][20]
The B-series, J-series and W-series are Dell branded versions of switches from Brocade Communications Systems, Juniper Networks and Aruba Networks respectively.[21]
Due to the aquisition of Force10 the available PowerConnect-J series and PowerConnect B-series have been restricted to product lines for which there is NO alternative (yet) from Force10 are still available as OEM PowerConnect switch. Examples of still available products are the Brocade FCoE and pure Fibre Channel switches and the Cisco Catalyst 3xxx switches for the M1000e enclosure.
The normal (datacenter)ethernet switches from Juniper and Brocade are being replaced by Dell Force10 models[22] `` The W-series, which is the Aruba product line for enterprise class WiFi switches will continue to be available and the available models are extended in the near future.
In July 2011 Dell announced the acquisition of Force10 Networks, another company that designed and marketed Ethernet switches.[23] The deal completed on August 26, 2011.[1] This led to speculation that relationships with other vendors such as Cisco and Brocade would change because they overlap the data center market.[23] In September 2011 Dell announced plans to expand the staff from Force10 in San Jose, California and Chennai, India.[24]
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