Delta Open Networking Switches at 100GbE and 400GbE

At Computex 2019, Delta showed off several switches. These included 10GbE options, but we wanted to focus on some of the higher-end offerings, namely some of the 100GbE and 400GbE products. Although not a household name like Cisco in the switching area, Delta makes an enormous number of switches for the industry as an OEM/ODM. As the network OS moves to an open networking standard (e.g. SONiC, Big Switch, and Cumulus), Delta is seizing the opportunity to start selling switches beyond its traditional customer base. Make no mistake, Delta has the experience building high-quality networking hardware since it has been doing so for the industry.

The Delta Open Networking Switches at Computex 2019

Starting with an overview photo, one can see the 10GbE SFP+ switches with 100GbE as well as the half-width switches that are higher port count versions of the Dell EMC S4112-ON and Dell EMC PowerSwitch S5212F-ON we have covered on STH, very similar to the Mellanox SN2010 models. Delta has a fairly solid solution stack for today’s data center switching.

Delta is supporting ONIE as an example so that its open networking products can easily load network operating systems.

Delta AGC032 32x 400GbE Switch

More vendors are coming out with 400GbE switches, and Delta has its 1U 32x 400GbE switch on the show floor. The Delta AGC032 incorporates not just 32 ports of 400GbE QSFP-DD connectors but also two SFP+ cages and 1GbE for out-of-band functions.

The Delta AGC032 is built on the Broadcom Tomahawk 3 12.8Tbps switch chip. For the control plane, there is an Intel Xeon D-1527 CPU.

Delta AG90C8B 128x 100GbE Switch

If you saw the photos above, you may be wondering what that 4U switch is that looks almost like two 2U switches stacked together. This is the Delta AG90C8B 128x 100GbE switch.

The Delta AG90C8B also utilizes an Intel Xeon D-1527 CPU like the AGC032. Although it provides similar 12.8Tbps Tomahawk 3 switching like the 1U Delta AGC032, they are both using 1.6kW power supplies.

Delta AGV848 25GbE and 100GbE Switch

We also wanted to highlight the Delta AGV848 switch. This is a 48-port 25GbE SFP28 switch with 8x 100GbE QSFP28 ports as well.

To get that port density, Delta could not fit USB ports and 1GbE ports for management on the front of the switch making this a noteworthy entry in the market. This is a Trident 3 based switch, also using Broadcom silicon.

Final Words

We hope this look at some of the open networking options from Delta at Computex 2019 showed you another potential networking vendor for high-speed switches. If you want Cisco or Arista for their OSes, these are not the switches for you. Instead, if you want to leverage SONiC or a similar open networking OS to build your infrastructure, then you may want to give these a look.