Dell Network Switches

Dell's switching portfolio has been through three naming eras, which is the single biggest source of confusion when people try to buy it second-hand. PowerConnect was the original line, Force10 arrived with the 2011 acquisition and brought the S- and Z-series data-centre hardware, and the current naming is PowerSwitch under Dell EMC.

All three eras are still in production networks, and we carry stock across all of them.

Which family fits where

• PowerConnect 2800 / 3500 / 5500 / 6200 — legacy managed access, mostly Gigabit
• PowerSwitch N-series — campus access and aggregation, Layer 3 capable
• PowerSwitch S-series — top-of-rack data centre, 10/25/40/100G
• PowerSwitch Z-series — spine and high-density aggregation
• Force10 S4048 / S4810 — still extremely common as ToR in older racks

The operating-system question

Dell data-centre switches ship with either OS9 (the Force10 FTOS lineage) or OS10 (Dell's open networking build). These are not interchangeable, they are licensed separately, and the running image materially changes what a given box can do. Some S-series hardware is also sold as "open networking" (ONIE) for third-party NOS installation.

Because of that, the model number alone does not tell you what you are getting. Send us the service tag or the exact model string and we will confirm the OS, licence tier and port configuration of the actual unit before it ships.