White Papers

Direct from
Development
PowerEdge Product Group
Background
The new PowerEdge MX-Series platform offers a wealth of networking
options designed to scale from a single chassis to many. Offering a Future
Forward design, MX-Series networking offers end to end 25GbE/100GbE
connectivity while still maintaining backwards compatibility with
1/10/40GbE networks.
For single chassis requirements, the MX5108n Ethernet switch provides
low latency, high bandwidth network access and supports a variety of
uplink types.
MX5108n
For more demanding environments, the MX9116n Fabric Switching Engine
reduces latency and increases bandwidth even further, while scaling up to
10 chassis. This model adds 32G Fibre Channel and Fabric Expansion
capabilities via Dell EMC’s Scalable Fabric Architecture. The MX9116n
also supports heterogeneous rack servers and other Ethernet devices, for
a total of 104 devices.
Both switches support Open Networking, Full-switch and SmartFabric
operating modes.
MX9116n
Each system supports ONIE, enabling the option for third party SDN
solutions from Dell EMC Networking partners. Most installations, however,
will be deployed with Dell EMC Networking OS10 Enterprise Edition, which
can operate in two modes:
Full-Switch mode provides industry standard L2/L3 switching with full
customization and can be configured using the Command Line Interface
(CLI), API, or DevOps solutions such as Ansible.
SmartFabric Services is the latest Dell EMC Networking innovation and is
designed to greatly reduce the complexity of fabric configuration,
management, failure remediation and firmware updates. SmartFabric
Services also provides I/O aggregation, Active-Active multi-pathing and
physical topology validation.
PowerEdge MX-Series Fabric Management
Technical Note by:
Eric Kuzmack
Todd Mottershead
SUMMARY
The Dell EMC PowerEdge MX-
Series offers a wide range of
connectivity options. Optional
switch modules provide full L2/L3
switching capabilities and
implement industry standard Open
Networking technologies for true
software defined networking.
Additionally, customers can
choose to enable SmartFabric
Services to greatly reduce the
administrative burden of switch
management.