poopconnect
I don't want anything more to do with Dell PowerConnect 2700 series switches. These things are crap!
Today I had a fight with a PowerConnect 2724, and I lost when it committed suicide. The client has four of these switches, but they had never used the management features. The first two seemed fine as I logged in and created some VLAN's. The third one was a pain. It was in managed mode but would not answer on the previously assigned IP or the default management IP. As luck would have it this switch is mounted way the hell up in the air, so a platform lift was required to get to it to cycle it out of managed mode and back, after which I could finally log into it.
The last one acted a little funny at first, occasionally printing garbage to the page in the management interface, and then failing to load the nav menu on the left. Stupid and annoying, but I have seen that before from another client's 2724 so I didn't think much of it, I just logged out and logged back in. However, as soon as I got back in and created the second VLAN, I lost all connectivity to the switch. WTF? I hadn't yet changed VLAN tagging on any of the switches. It was still passing traffic and otherwise functioning OK, but the switch itself would not respond to ping or anything else. I was pretty confused about what had just happened, alas it was nearing quiting time so I didn't have any more time to troubleshoot.
So I find myself back again today to duel it out with the rogue switch. We put in a temporary switch so I could isolate the 2724 and try to get in or reset it and start from scratch. Even with nothing but my laptop connected, I got no reply from it on any address. So I reset it. That's when I started getting a few echo replies from the default management IP. Only problem was, I literally only got a few replies, and then nothing at all until I reset it again. I whipped out tcpdump and it told me that the replies I did receive were truncated. Hmmm. I tried pinging with tiny packet sizes and I got many more replies, but it didn't last long, and I still couldn't log in. It was accepting new connections on port 80, but it would close the connection within several seconds, without any response. At this point I declared the switch to be "fucked up" and called Dell to see what they could do to not help.
They suggested I try everything I'd already tried, after which I could hear them shrugging their shoulders apathetically. I asked if there was any hard reset procedure, anything deeper than the reset I already tried. Nope. I started to ask if there was any way to reload the firmware at boot with tftp or something, but they broke me off-- this switch can only be administered from the web interface. If that's not working, you're screwed. They pronounced the switch dead (or its management features, anyway) and then informed me that the warranty expired six months ago. Insensitive bastards.
So this is how I would describe the Dell PowerConnect 2724: A decent unmanaged gigabit switch... with a shitty management interface tacked on.
The biggest problems, besides the flaky web interface, are the lack of CLI via serial or telnet/ssh, and missing capability to backup or restore the configuration. I am recommending that our clients stay away from 2700 series Dell switches from now on.
