New Switches

[richbrowncardiff]

Hi All,

 

Has anyone used /had experience with the Dell X series switches ? looking at them and they look great but not sure if the new dashboard is just a gimmick or if its genuinely useful. cost wise they are extremely well priced and appear to have a great feature set.

 

Any options / Advice much appreciated as always.

[Sagima]

I have three of them. the X4012 is actually quite a good little fibre/core switch (I have two of those and If I hadn't already purchased a 4032F I'd have three).

 

I also have a X1052P which also does it job perfectly well but I'm a bit less happy with because I like to configure switches with CLI and their CLI is extremely basic (really, really cut down), also, and this may seem a bit picky, the traffic LEDs are like strobe lighting - they are really, really bright and distracting.

I needed a POE+ switch with 4 SPF+ ports and it does its job. If I found myself in the same position I'd probably buy a second one but when those 4 SFP+ ports aren't necessary I prefer Dell's, albeit much pricier, N2000 series.

Saying that it really does do everything I need it to - the setup wizards are quite good as well - changing anything tends to bring up a wizard to guide you through it

 

 

I'd say they are somewhere between the old dell 2000 series (not the newer N2000 series) and the old 5000 series. I prefer them to the Allied Telesys switches I have as well - again bought because I had a specific need of a few cheap 10 port poe switches to run phones off of)

 

If you're not doing anything overly complicated on your network (they do al the basics - spanning tree, vlans, voice vlan, snmp monitoring) and can have some patience with the sometimes sluggish gui then they are hard to knock

[richbrowncardiff]

Great thanks very much. I will try and get a demo unit to have a play with. Does the X4012 do L3 for vlan routing ?

[Sagima]

It is layer 2+ so it does a bit of routing but I use my firewall for that so I can't attest to how easy that is to set up but the routing wizard is exactly where you'd expect it to be.

 

Do note that it doesn't come with the rackmount kit - you'll need to order that separately.

You can either get the brackets that fit or a sort of shelf that you can fit another x4012, x1018 or x1026 right next to it - a sort of modular switch setup when looking but they are separate devices to manage - they don't stack as one unit.

[richbrowncardiff]

Perfect thanks very much I will try and get one to have a play with.