FS S5860-20SQ Internal Hardware Overview
Inside the switch, one may be interested to find that the PCB is relatively small even given the relatively large amount of room in the chassis and the higher port count.
The main PCB has the headers for the fans and power supplies, the switch chip and controllers, along with the ports.
One interesting aspect is the port cages. The SFP+ port cages have perforations. The higher-speed SFP28 cages do not. One may assume that the SFP28 cages need more airflow, but this is apparently not the case.
The airflow of the chassis is port to power supply. Between the two fan modules and the two power supplies, there are four fans. This is not an ultra-high power consumption switch so the cooling needs are relatively modest.
The two fan modules are on long carriers that attach to the chassis. We would have liked if these were standard 4-pin PWM fans so they could be swapped easily if needed. Instead, the four pins go to two different connectors which is a different design.
The main feature of the switch is the switch chip which is covered by a modest heatsink, but by far the largest heatsink in the chassis.
Under this heatsink is the Broadcom BCM56170 which has an Arm A9 processor as well as all of the connectivity. This switch chip has Layer 3 processing capabilities as well which is a bit more than one may have expected in a switch of this price/ class. Reading the Broadcom materials, this was designed to also be a multi-gig switch chip with uplinks. We hope to see a high port count 2.5GbE solution with this switch one day.
If you remember the large vent on the side of the chassis, FS channels air from that vent to the main motherboard PCB. Realistically, the entire side of the chassis is not being used.
Hopefully, that hardware overview gives you a sense of what you get in this switch. Next, we are going to take a look at performance and management.
FS has great a selection of bare-metal switches from 10G all the way up to 400G. And all of them are extremely cheap compared to big vendors. It would be great if you could review some of them.
We’re considering going with their switches on a new project. Previously we used supermicro bare-metal switches. They worked great but they’re based on older broadcom chips that lack some important features and there’s not much to choose from anyway. One 10G and one 100G switch. FS has plenty to choose from.
It is nice to see some performance numbers and gui features, but I do miss feature testing in the networking reviews here.
I would have been very helpful to see what features it has and if they are actually working. Stacking, mlag, l3, dynamic routing, vrrp, stp, vlan and vlan in vlan, security, login possibilities (not just local accounts), logging, 802.1x features (although not that important for a ToR switch like this).
I have looked at FS.com switches for a while, but there is too little information around the web if the features really work and if it is stable or not…
Bought 2 of these switches about 6 months ago. So far they’ve worked flawlessly. We’re using them for L2 and light L3, with about 10 VLANS. No crashes, no problems so far. CLI is a Cisco clone. Web GUI is terrible. Beats not having one, but not by much. Obvious spelling errors, etc. No firmware updates posted on their website, at least not the last time I looked. Minor imperfections with syslog. Basically a good deal for the price, but the lack of firmware updates makes me nervous on how well they are maintaining their platform.
“On noise, we measured around 42W at 1M …”
I am guessing you mean dB? I use an 8 port 40 gig Mellanox IB switch at home, had to swap out its little jet engine fans to get some peace. So I was wondering about noise here. Thanks for reporting it!
An impressive switch, can someone suggest same configurations but instead of 16xSFP+, RJ45 10G Base T.
I know using SFP+ to RJ45 Copper Modules will add power overhead & heat. DO you thin it is a good idea to install Qty (10) of SFP+ to RJ45 Copper Modules to compenstae for the missing RJ45 ports
Thanks and advance
Def some stuff in video not here.
How do you compare this FS switch with cisco switch with similar price range/spec (say sx350x-24F) on performance prospective?
This video review by Patrick (STH) will certainly have me looking at this multi featured Very Hi Speed managed switch.
I have had in my network rack since 2017 an FS 24 gigabit port managed switch with 4 SFP+ combo ports. Was only like $160 back then in 2017. It hasn’t been retired yet because of 4 fiber connections. It is a very “easy to use” managed switch and supports link aggregation, too.
And I’ve used a few different transceivers in the SFP+ cages over the years and they have worked flawlessly.
I really like the FS website videos and they have been very helpful for me.
On another topic their 1Gb multi media converters are reasonably priced and work 24x7x365 without a hiccup.
So for my S&MB deployments FS for gigabit along with QNAP for hi speed 2.5 & 10Gb applications have become my mainstays.
Patrick thanks for the excellent review.
Since there are so many SPF+, etc cages, I’m thinking I would feel more confident from an expected heat generation standpoint to use fiber optic transceivers and limit my use of RJ45 TBase Transceivers.
Energy consumption (and thus heat) are different normally between the 10Gb transceivers types (fiber & TBase).
And STH has reviewed 10 Gb RJ45 TBase transceivers previously showing the similarities & differences.
It would be nice if the S5860-20SQ ran SONiC…
Would like to see a review of the FS N8550-32C which looks like a rebadged Edge-Core AS7726-32X.
I’m wondering about the converters too, I need 5-6 Base-T ports, not sure if that’s a problem in the power budget.
AKA – Ruijie Networks – RG-S6120-20XS4VS2QXS
I have the FS switch model S5500-48T8SP. Now sitting in storage because of the fan noise. I share an office with the wife, both working from home. These switch looking like Ruijie network switches. Have you reviewed any of the Ruijie Network switches?