Well, I went ahead and loaded the latest firmware and even with it...this switch still has problems. Our entire network went down due to this issue, since I'm using the 5224's as core switches. I called tech. support and apparently they haven't heard of any issues after loading the latest firmware; however, I read on this forum that a few people are still having the same issue.

I ended up taking those switches off production and got  some 3248s as my core switches and no problems as of yet.

I'm now trying to get refunds on all these 5224 switches I bought

I don't know know if it fixes any old problems, but in my case after installing it I lost all my fibers uplinks connections. So I tried to unplug and replug the SFP transceiver but still the connections were going up and down randomly.

So I dowgraded back to v.2.10 with wich I'm currently satisfied. No problems to report with it.

I have two of these units, but not for very much longer.  The first one failed three times in almost as many weeks.  I replaced it with another, with the upgraded v3 firmware.   That one lasted almost a week and has just failed again, so clearly the upgraded firmware doesn't fix the problem.  This box happens to be at the core of our network, so when it fails it takes everything with it.  Fabulous.

Have just spoken to our account rep to express our disgust.  We're returning them and will replace with something reliable, probably Cisco.

Dell - take this unit off the market until you've worked out the bugs.  Your customers shouldn't be your testers.

I have a 5012 that is in my Server Closet doing the same thing...FW upgrades didn't solve. Going to have to swap in a 10/100 catalyst.  The two 3024's in production do seem pretty stable. 

The nagging question now is why didn't I look at this forum before I made the purchase 6 weeks ago

Any one having luck with refunds / credit?

Poor form Dell, poor form.

PW

Some info from Dell's Powerconnect group ...

Engineering is testing firmware version 3.1

They're also investigating a possible bridging problem between the two ASICs in the 5224 (one controls ports 1-12, the other 13-24).  If you've got a problem on one side of the bridge, try moving things to the other and see if that helps (it didn't help us).

Dell suggested swapping the 5224s with 5212s, which have only one ASIC and haven't exhibited the problem.  Thank you, but no.  The 5000 series has 10-foot pole marks all over it, as far as I'm concerned.

 

Hmm...all that investigating should've been done before this product was released.

At the moment we have our 5224 switches off production (we're back to a 100Mbit backbone  ); we can't afford to have any more downtime. Worst part of all is I've called tech support and they don't seem to have any records/cases of people having problems with the latest firmware. What's even worse, they don't even know that DELL hosts these forums, so I ended up emailing this link to one of the technicians so they could realize what's going on with these switches.

Is Dell going to respond on this issue.  There are several responses to other inquiries but this thread lay dormant? 

Hello, Dell?  Anyone home?  Can you confirm that 3.0 is still broken? that 3.1 is being tested? ASIC problem?  Your customers need to hear from you.

What FM version are you using on the 5012? I've been having a terrible time with it.

I had my Exchange svr on one port (about 200 mailboxes) and it kept dropping out...I moved it back onto the cisco 10/100 and it has been fine.  I wish the 5012 would work like it is supposed to (out of the box).

PW

Hello all!

We were very early adopters of the Dell switches (aren't they just re-branded extreme network switches?), and were initially VERY impressed by the first 3024's we received.  I've installed about 20 of these as replacements for my edge switches.  We then bought our first 5012, which was very good, but was 'quirky' to say the least in getting it setup with our core switch; a Cisco 4006.

Help from tech support was moot at that point; one of the techs didn't even know Dell had branded their own switch!  We worked through the issues finally (with sales engineering support, totally going around the normal tech support) and eventually were able to get the switches talking. 

We decided to try out the 5224's, and were one of the first companies to use them.  Again, we had major problems getting them to talk to our Cisco, and seemingly they 'magically' started working.  Thanks for telling me they came with mini-gbic interfaces by the way (grrrrrrrr.....)

The 5224's have been flaky at best though, and have cost us tens of thousands of dollars in lost man hours, not to mention a good deal of my rear.  For one, I couldn't perform large file copies over these switches as dumb as that sounds.  I tried migrating a server from one sans unit to the other by copying the data over the network (about 100 GB of data), and after about a half hour of tremedous throughput, the switch speeds would slow to a crawl. We've also experienced the dreaded connect to the management interface problems, where once you're done working on the switch, it will lock up?  Not accepting arps?  I've had all sorts of arp related issues, and they seem to cascade from the 5224 through the Cicso core, and out to my other Dell switches.  Finally, after determining we had some sort of arp problem, and reading these forums, we decided to up the firmware to the latest and greatest in troubleshooting our latest server connectivity problems.

The new firmware crashed my entire network after about 4 hours after I installed it.  The problems start with the 5224.  I get some soft of error on the cisco along the lines on that port of "expected something else" in the console message log, and all of the other Dell gig-switches stop working.  They seem to bounce up and down in connectivity, with 30 seconds or so of good traffic, and 30 seconds of nothing.  This happened twice to us on Thursday of last week.  I eventually rolled back the firmware release, and it kept things up.

I have 4 of these 5224 switches in boxes, and pushed through an emergency purchase of a Cisco 24 port gig switch for almost FOUR TIMES the amount that the Dell cost.  Needless to say, I'm extremely dissapointed in these switches, and will probably not use them anymore.  I don't mind using the 5012s which have been stable, but that's half the density and twice the uplinks that I have to worry about, and more complication.

Interesting how not one DELL engineer has stopped by and add a comment on this messag thread.

Helloo...is anyone from DELL out there reading this?...probably not !