Dell PowerSwitch Z9264F-ON 100GbE Switch

The Dell PowerSwitch Z9264F-ON is a 2RU fixed-configuration switch with 64 QSFP28 ports running 1, 10, 25, 40, 50 or 100GbE, plus two SFP+ ports at 1 and 10GbE, two hot-swappable power supplies and four hot-swappable fan modules. This unit is the reverse-airflow build.

Sixty-four ports of 100GbE in two rack units is the point of this switch. It is the density step above a 32-port spine, and it changes the shape of the fabric you can build with one box: 64 x 100GbE is 6.4 Tbps of aggregate port bandwidth, which is enough spine capacity for a fabric that no longer fits behind a 1RU switch.

Scaling up from a 32-port spine

A 32-port 100GbE spine such as the Z9100-ON supports 32 leaves at a single 100GbE uplink each, or 16 leaves at dual uplink. That ceiling is where most enterprise fabrics stop, and it is a perfectly good place to stop.

The Z9264F-ON doubles it. Sixty-four leaves at single uplink, or 32 leaves with dual 100GbE uplinks for path redundancy - and the second number is the one that matters, because dual-homing every leaf is what makes a fabric survivable. Building 32 dual-homed leaves out of 32-port spines takes two chassis, two management addresses and two sets of failure modes. The Z9264F-ON does it in one, at 2RU.

The other use is end-of-row. Dell describes this switch as both top-of-rack and end-of-row, and 64 high-speed ports is exactly the count that makes an EoR aggregation switch worth cabling to. With breakout, the same chassis reaches 128 ports of 50, 25, 10 or 1GbE - so an EoR position can terminate a whole row of mixed-speed servers from one place.

The port matrix, precisely

Every one of the 64 cages is a QSFP28, and Dell documents the supported profiles explicitly rather than leaving them to be inferred:

• 64 x 100GbE native QSFP28
• 64 x 40GbE native, or 128 x 40GbE via breakout
• 128 x 50GbE via breakout
• 128 x 25GbE via breakout
• 128 x 10GbE via breakout
• 128 x 1GbE via breakout

Note what that matrix says and does not say. The breakout ceiling is 128, not 256 - Dell exposes breakout on half the cages, not all of them. That is worth checking against your own design before you assume a port count, and it is exactly the kind of detail that a four-lanes-per-cage assumption gets wrong.

Two additional SFP+ ports run at 1 and 10GbE with multi-mode and single-mode options, useful for a management uplink or an out-of-band path that does not consume a 100GbE cage.

Airflow: standard and reverse builds

This listing is the model page for the Z9264F-ON and covers both airflow builds. Select the direction under the Airflow option: direction is set by the power supplies and fan modules fitted, so it is a build-time choice, and PSUs and fans must both face the same way.

The reverse-airflow unit. Air is drawn in at the power-supply and fan face and exhausted at the I/O panel, which is the opposite of Dell's standard direction.

You want reverse airflow when the switch is racked with its port face toward the hot aisle. That layout is extremely common, because it puts the switch ports on the same side as the server NICs and keeps the cabling short and tidy. In that orientation a standard airflow switch would be inhaling the row's own exhaust - the exact condition that drives inlet temperatures up and fan speeds with them.

If your switch will sit with its ports in the cold aisle instead, you want the standard airflow build. This is not a setting: power supplies and fan modules are direction-specific parts, and the whole chassis must run one direction. Changing later means powering down and swapping every PSU and every fan module. Get it right at order time.

Open networking: SmartFabric OS10 or SONiC, your call

The "-ON" suffix is Dell's open networking designation. The switch boots the Open Network Install Environment, which fetches and installs a network operating system over the network; ONIE is a bootloader, not an operating system. Dell documents both SmartFabric OS10 and Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies for this platform, and the ONIE bootloader will equally install other ONIE-compatible network operating systems.

For a refurbished buyer that decoupling is the whole value proposition. You are buying 64 ports of 100GbE silicon and a 4-core Denverton control plane with 16GB of DDR4 and a 32GB SSD. What runs on it is a separate decision you make at install time, not a licence state you inherit from the previous owner. Expect the unit to arrive needing an OS install; a switch at the ONIE prompt is in the state Dell intended.

Power, cooling and physical planning

Two hot-swappable power supplies and four hot-swappable fan modules provide the redundancy. AC supplies run from 100-240 VAC at 50/60 Hz, drawing at most 4.7A at 100V or 2.35A at 200V; DC supplies run from -48 V or -60 V. Dell rates maximum power capability at 1104.37W, calculated with 4.5W QSFP28 optics installed - which is the honest way to quote a switch's power, because at 64 ports the optics are a large share of the draw. Plan the circuit around your actual optics, not around the chassis alone.

The chassis is 3.37 in high, 17.4 in wide and 20.0 in deep, with the PSU and fan tray handles adding 1.38 in behind. It weighs 34.6 lbs with both power supplies and all four fans installed. Leave five inches of clearance front and back. Operating range is 32 to 113 F (0 to 45 C), with a short-term allowance down to 23 F (-5 C) for up to 1% of operational hours per year, and a 1 C derate per 125 m above 950 m of altitude.

Cabling: DAC and breakout

The QSFP28 cages take standard passive 100GBASE-CR4 direct-attach twinax for in-rack and adjacent-rack runs, and 100G-to-4x25G breakout DACs where a spine port feeds four 25GbE endpoints. Both are configurable on this page. Optical QSFP28 modules fit the same cages for longer runs - tell us the reach and the far-end device and we will confirm compatibility before the unit ships.

Every unit is professionally reconditioned, fully tested and shipped with warranty. Higher up the family, the Z9432F-ON and Z9664F-ON move the fabric to 400GbE; the modular S6100-ON is the alternative when the port mix has to stay flexible rather than uniform.

Specifications