Dell PowerConnect 6224 for home lab?

N

nry

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 10, 2008
Messages
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I'm in the process of building a small home lab (also for work as I work for myself) with 5 esxi hosts and a self built NAS, which will serve as my iscsi storage for ESXi

Currently have a HP procurve 1800-24G which is a decent switch and seems to stand up fairly well but I would like a layer 3 switch to play with. This has led me to the Dell switch which seems to havesome very mixed reviews, but have a few questions:

1. Would this switch be suitable for learning layer 3 capabilities?

2. Is this switch more complicated to setup that other manufactures? I'm not afraid of a command link!

3. Are the switchs fansnoisy? I have to sit within 1-2m of the lab! And as my 24 HDDs are not exactly quiet it's not a high pitched noise I have heard of some networking kit

4. If I get a 10gbe sfp+ expansion module, can this be connected to my
X520-DA PCIe card in my NAS?
I can easily saturate a gigabit link with 50-100 VMs so thinking the 10G link may help here as my network is definitely a bottleneck.

My reason for picking this switch,
I can get it for £150 delivered 2nd hand!
The sfp+ module I can get for £135, then I assume I can get a SFP+ to SFP+ cable for £30
So overall it's pretty cheap in comparison to some others out there, and as its not for a production environment 100% uptime isn't essential as it will be powered down when not in use
 
Bump :)

Have found a HP A5120-48G on eBay which would probably work out about triple the price of the dell. Guessing it's louder too!
 
1. Yes, it is a Layer 3 switch.
2. Yes, Dell switches IMO are not super intuitive.
3. The fans are really loud but you can pop the top and replace them.
4. Yes you can buy a module to support 10gb.

You should also take a look at the HP 2910AL.
 
Cheers

I have looked at the HP 2910AL and cheapest I have seen them is £600, add a SFP+ module which is upwards of £400 on eBay I am at £1000!

The HP model I mentioned previously is currently at £200 on eBay with no bids, brand new. But again the SFP+ modules for these are £700+

I have also come across the SG500X-24 which I have found for £970 new which has 4 SFP+ ports.

The Dell 6200 models seem to be a very cheap in comparison which concerns me a little that they may just be a pile of crap on the L3 front. As even the 48 port model can be had for around £400-500, add a SFP+ module for £135 and it's almost half of the other options
 
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