The D-Link DGS-3024 finally bit it.It hasn’t occurred to me that there could be a problem, even though my network throughput speeds have absolutely plummeted. I was able to move a file across the network at easy 100MB/s. Last time I copied an iso, it was moving at only 11MB/s. Of course, figures that the switch will go down while I’m doing on-site at a client. Took the whole network down, including the Site-To-Site VPN tunnels between my two DCs. No email, no source control, no nothing.
Oh well, I bought that switch on Kijiji about 3-4 years ago for about $80. Can’t complain really. I wonder now if I can get bring it back to life.
It’s a good thing I held on to an extra Dell PowerConnect 5224 I bought on eBay about 8 months ago when I was setting up a new half-rack at one of my DCs.
What a pain the the ass it was to replace it though. With all the patch cables between the two switches and the patch panels, I had to disconnect everything just to pull the dead switch out of the rack. Then of course, I figured if I’m gonna go that far, might as well reorganize the whole network. Pulled everything out, switches, patch cables, unplugged all servers. Took about 4 hours to rewire everything just enough to get me back up and running. This included all the necessary connections and configuring the switches for the VLAN’s and Trunking.
Once I get my new servers racked up I’ll wire the rest.
Just noticed how filthy the server case below the switch is. I guess I got some house cleaning todo.
hey, nice blog. i was just recently given an x750e to play around with, and stumbled across your site because of the pfsense stuff. i’m currently running pf as a virtual on hyper-v, which is what replaced the watchguard, incidentally, for a client of mine.
going to see if i can pull off the conversion here this weekend, but i was actually writing now for a totally different topic: D-link switches. I saw you had an entry about a DGS3024. Funny, we’ve got a lot of the same equipment, my main gig switch is a Dell PowerConnect 5324, with one Fiber port running up to a 3550 Cisco that I use solely for layer 3. awfully funny looking to have a big 48 port switch with one fiber, one copper connection only.
Awhile back I picked up a DXS3227 switch, and have spent all of about 15 minutes playing around with it to date. I never could find anyone that knew much about or had used D-Link switches, so I was hesitant to even consider re-configuring my core before learning a bit more.
from the looks of it, the switch is layer 2 plus, (never heard of this before, have you?), which apparently means it will do static layer 3 routing. as a core switch, used primarily for VLAN routing, i think that would work just fine…. have you ever worked with this particular switch model? anything you could tell me about the D-Links in general?
thanks,
SAA
I’m trying to avoid D-Link switches now. Aside from the DGS-3024 that failed, I’ve had another DGS-3024 fail on me elsewhere just a few short months later. I also had some “green” low power D-Link GB switches that had a tendency to randomly freeze and required power cycling, ended up tossing those as they were very unreliable.
I’ve been pretty happy with the Dell PowerConnect switches and very, very happy with the Force 10 switches. The latency is incredible on the Force 10 and they’re dirt cheap now on eBay. Lately I’ve been eyeing the Netgear XS708E switch. It’s an 8 port 10Gbe copper switch for under $1K. Netgear isn’t exactly top brand but for under $1K would be great for lab environment.
I’ve never heard of Layer 2 Plus. Perhaps means it can do Layer 3 with firmware upgrade? Maybe it’s marketing speak for Layer 2 with some Layer 3 functionality. i.e. basic routing capabilities but no fancy stuff like eigrp etc.
Tom