Last week I had the "pleasure" of configuring a Dell PowerConnect switch. Not a bad piece of kit, just not a Cisco, the PC6224 is a Layer 3 switch with 24 x GB Ethernet (GBe) ports and 4 x GB Interface (GBIC) ports.

Once racked and powered the real fun started – CONFIG....

> en
> sh run
Oops apparently I meant
> show running-config
> conf t
Again, oops I apparently meant
> configure
....
> wr mem
Doh - I mean
> write memory
No, humm
> save
Where is that !@#$ing command line reference manual!@!@!

The commands are fairly similar to those on a Cisco and with tab complete and in-line help it doesn’t take much to work out the differences. But beware there are a few gottya’s that I found and decided to share:

• Trying to wr mem maybe you should try copy running-config startup-config. What are we five! At least let me save my changes easily.
• The PowerConnect IOS doesn’t use alias, anywhere. Be sure to use that TAB button to complete your command before you execute it.
• No VTP, instead PowerConnect switches use GRVP (same thing just a different standard), so if you have to trunk between a Cisco and PowerConnect you have to enable GRVP on the Cisco first.
• It is only a 24 port switch. By purchasing the optional SFPs and installing them in the any of the GBIC ports you lose one of the GBe ports.
• No way to manually set the time and date on the switch. Clock is only configurable via an NPT server.
• Unable to set management IP on a routable VLAN. If you try and set the management interface to a routable VLAN you receive and error; luckily I managed to find this article which details the work-around.