Dell VEP4600 Topology
We could not find an official block diagram for this, but we were able to pull the topology. Frankly, with only 16 cores and almost as many network ports, this one was interesting.
Dell VEP4600 Management
In terms of management, the Dell VEP4600 has an ASPEED BMC instead of an iDRAC controller. As a result, this appears to be using MegaRAC instead of iDRAC.
You get most of the basic features you would want like power control. The one we did not have active in ours was a HTML5 iKVM. That is something that was common in Supermicro ASPEED BMC servers of this class and era, so it was a bummer not to have it here.
Still, having IPMI management and plenty of sensors is always nice.
A quick tip is that ours had an older firmware version. We ended up using the local serial console connection and the BMC’s Serial-over-LAN (SOL) feature to do the big package upgrades.
Overall, it is nice to have out-of-band management of some sort, but it would have been better to have an HTML5 iKVM option.
Next, let us get to performance.
the only thing I find for that price is the 4-core version of this, not the 16 core
A really interesting hands-on review of the Dell VEP4600. I liked the personal perspective combined with the detailed look at its networking capabilities, making it easy to understand why this system stands out.
It looks like Dell are flogging the last few units before they are gone for good.
Nice to see home lab style kit on STH again :)
What the heck is this thing supposed to be? Is it a server or a switch or something else altogether? The article doesn’t seem to make that clear. Can somebody answer this for me? Thank you.
@Stephen either a lower power server, or more likely a router/firewall
@Stephen these boxes are made for Velocloud SD-WAN, so they’re essentially a networking appliance. In the end they are essentially servers with a switch chip linked to some of the PCIe lanes to provide additional connectivity.
So is lack of HTML5 iKVM a license issue, or is it just plain not provided in this model?