Dell 6248, 7048 or Force 10 S50N?

GTS - Support AB,

All three of the switches you mentioned would work just fine. I was able to find a link for you that has PDFs for a number of different setups of different switches and different Operating Systems that will work with different EQL arrays.

en.community.dell.com/.../3615.rapid-equallogic-configuration-portal-by-sis.aspx

Please take a look and feel free to let me know if you have any further questions as I would be happy to assist.

Hi Kenny,

Thanks for your reply. Had seen those examples, but what about more than three arrays? For the 7048 and S60 for example there are reference designs in which the switches were tested with up to eight or sixteen arrays. Just want to be sure we buy the right switches. Also with the switches I mentioned the recommendation is now to use flowcontrol above cut-through or adaptive forwarding?

Regards,

Alfred

The number of arrays that you can have in a pool will not diff between the switches. As long as the switch is listed as a supported switch and the arrays stay with in the supported configuration on the array you will not have an issue. For example with the PC7048 switch, it will work with less then and more then three arrays. Just make sure when you are adding the arrays that you are setting them up with the best practices in mind and you will have no issues.

One note though; when scaling out to more arrays, more powerful switches definitely impact the ability to sustain performance.

This is why the S60 is a good choice for setups involving higher numbers of PS units. The PowerConnect 7048 is already a lot better than the 6248. I'm not sure where the S50 fits in in the rankings though.

The 6248 is by no means bad, but with more IO in the setup it is more likely to slow you down as the CPU may not be able to keep up.