branded white box) network switch category in addition.Īdd in fabric capabilities, and Dell EMC has moved from being a network vendor whose equipment sits within server racks, and is now a player capable of providing the whole switching infrastructure for the data center or campus network. Given that at its most basic, Computer + Trident II = managed switch, and given that Dell already made the computer part of this equation, it was well placed to produce network switches which could then be certified for use with other operating systems, neatly fitting into the (please forgive me) brite box (i.e. Dell identified the opportunity to use what was becoming ubiquitous merchant silicon like the Broadcom Trident II chipset to be able to play at the exact same level as everybody else. Previous OS incarnations were of varying quality, as has been the case with many vendor-branded switches, and with the release of OS10, Dell Networks (as it was at the time) put a stake in the ground and showed that they wanted things to be different.
The first is Dell EMC’s OS10, a modular network operating system which by all accounts is actually pretty capable. It’s my belief though, that two things in recent years have dramatically changed that perspective. In other words, they lacked credibility or worse, the rack would come with another vendor’s switches in them, reinforcing the idea that Dell’s own products weren’t up to the job. In my previous experience, the legacy Dell Networking products have unfortunately been seen as those things that get thrown in when you buy a rack of servers. I’m at the Dell EMC World 2017 conference in Las Vegas this week, and I’ve been enjoying catching up on what the network group has been up to.