RJ45 jack with SFP+

[Guillaume]

Hi guys,

We are looking to replace our Core infrastructure and jumping from old 5520T stack to VSP 7000 series. It will be a great update ! Probably for 2 big office this year.

But we don't want to replace our 6x 5520T for 8-9x 7024XT, this would be a big invoice for 1 year. We want to go gradually.

So with our estimation, we can go with 2x 7024XT and for the rest that need less ressource and who don't need 10GB, we want to put them on a stack of 2x 4850GTS-POE+. Mostly because we can use the 2 SFP+ port to rely them to our 7000.

But here is the problem, it seem that it's not possible to have RJ45 jack with a SFP+. Only fiber or SFP+ Direct Attach. But we won't have an SFP+ port on our 7000 because we want the MDA module to be 8 10Gbase-T (so 32 10GBase-T port per switch) port as well. Changing those module would mean for us to buy a third switch... Which we can't.

Anyone have a suggestion for this ? Is there any cable SFP+ DA to RJ45 ? Or any external converter at all ? It's only for 2 connection !

Thanks !

[Telair]

You should be able to plug an RJ-45 SFP in to an SFP+ port as long as you want to do 1Gig.  There is no regular 10Gig copper SFP+ that I have ever seen.  The problem is 10Gig copper takes more power to do than the SFP+ port can provide to push to it's maximum distance of 100 meters.  You can get short distance 10Gig SFP+ copper, but it's a preformed cable with the SFP's attached and only goes maybe 5 meters at most.  It's also called "twinax" cables.

http://www.brocade.com/downloads/documents/data_sheets/product_data_sheets/10-gbps-copper-cable-ds.pdf

Here are some 1Gig fiber to copper converters if that does what your looking for.

http://www.startech.com/Networking-IO/Media-Converters/Fiber/

[Guillaume]

Yeah I did found a converter, but for near 1 400$. So we'll have to change our mind and have the MDA module to be 8 port SFP+. We'll use Direct Attach copper for some of our server.

Thanks !