Transcript of Dell 10G Eval Wiki Web Chat of 1/3/08 (edited for brevity and accuracy)

bh1633 Hello. This is Bruce Holmes - PowerConnect Engineering
dgebeke Greg, our net. eng will be here soon too
DELL-davej Everyone, DeDe is with Basin Electric
DELL-davej She was on the last web chat and had lots of networking questions
DELL-davej Which is why we are here today with Jason Echols as our first guest webchat host
jason_echols Great, we'll be happy to help.
DELL-davej Further intros: Roger, MarkO, Scott and I are with the Enterprise TechCenter
RAHorton Bo Griffin (dwbogriffin) and I (Richard Horton) are two of the 10G Product Engineers from the Dell Product Group Test organization.
dgebeke Greg is our network engineer at Basin Electric
DELL-davej Well let's kick it off then. Other customers can catch up or read the transcript. Greg/DeDe, what specifically would you like Jason to cover?
dgebeke Greg did you want to start with the private vlan stuff?
gauf We use VLANS in our environment, we would like to use private or secondary VLAns also. Your 1855 and 1955 switches do no use this technology. Does your new switch incorporate this technology?
bh1633 yes
dgebeke yeah
gauf Can they also use vlans 1024-4096?
bh1633 I do not understand the question. Why would we not?
jason_echols The M6220 supports up to 1024 VLANs, but they can be numbered in the 1024-4096 range. Does this help?
gauf Some switches only utilize vlans 1-1005, I just want to see if your switches can use the extended vlans.
bh1633 yes we can.
dgebeke thats good. But you can only support 1024 total is that correct?
bh1633 yes
gauf Currently we can not use VTP to advertise vlans so we set the switches to transparent and add manually the vlans. Do the switches support VTP?
bh1633 no. VTP is a cisco protocol. we support gvrp.
jason_echols The Cisco switches will support ths protocol, however the PowerConnect switch utilizes industry standards for VLANs.
DELL-davej Greg were you aware that we will be offering Cisco and PowerConnect switches?
dgebeke yes we are aware, but not willing to pay the price difference
aaron_hanson joined.
gauf Yes, I know. Cisco is a good company, however they want too many $$$s. I would prefer your 6220 switch and understand its limits.
jason_echols We have a brief document on VLAN compatibility with Cisco and using GVRP at http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pwcnt/en/app_note_4.pdf
jason_echols This is based on an older model and CLI, but gives you the outline for doing this with PowerConnect.
gauf You have answered all of my questions and thanks for the link, I will review it. By the way the link didn't bother me. Farewell
dgebeke Well i think that was all the questions that greg and I had
jason_echols Great! Do you have any plans to utilize stacking in your environment?
dgebeke absolutely
jason_echols We should have a document out that reviews stacking best practices in the next few weeks. Mike, do you know where we plan to post this document?
dgebeke I think that is all pretty self explainatory
dgebeke oh that would be good.
RAHorton We are about to release a whitepaper discussing stacking on the 10G modular switches
dgebeke we've seen a power point presentation on it, is this a different document?
RAHorton yes
mikejroberts i'll send them the latest draft of the document + the blade specific vlan docs
dgebeke that sounds good.
RAHorton the update I sent an hour ago, Mike, should be very close to the final deal...
DELL-davej DeDe, we're going to be posting a number of documents in the next few days and linking to them from the wiki
dgebeke I am sorry but I have to cut this short. If you guys could send that to me it would be great
dgebeke oh ok ill be able to get to them through the wiki
dgebeke sounds great.
DELL-davej DeDe you have been our best web chat customer! See you next Tuesday
jason_echols Have a great day, DeDe!
dgebeke ok that sounds great. Tuesday or Wednesday?
DELL-davej We're going back to "Tech Tuesday"
dgebeke oh ok cool
DELL-davej same time - 3 PM CST
DELL-davej Thanks, guys.