Hi All,
I am looking into purchasing a 10G switch for my server rack and kindly asking the fellow community for a recommendation. I think that ~24xSFP+ ports (I want to use port aggregation) will be enough for my setup. I have a quite small budget, so I am considering buying used stuff, and this is what I have on the local market:
Arista Networks DCS-7124SX
Brocade TurboIron TI24X
H3C S5820X-28S
IBM Blade RackSwitch G8124
IBM Ethernet Switch B24x
Quanta LB6M
They are all of +/- the same price.
Do you have any recommendations about these switches? Which one worth buying and will fit my needs best since I have a count of HP-branded transceivers, some Ubiquiti and Cisco DACs, and a couple of Chinese transceivers in my setup and don’t want a switch to refuse to work with them (like Cisco does very often).
Used Brocade at my last job and have one as my core at home (ICX 6610) and find them easy enough to use and firmware is readily available.
If it were me, I’d buy this just for familiarity and availability of firmware / resources. If you can stretch the budget a bit, the Brocade ICX6650 is a newer model that is similar.
The Quanta LB6M is pretty popular for homelab, but I have no experience with them.
I use DACs at home, not sure offhand what we used at the previous job for optics.
I’ve got a 40g QSFP+ from NetApp, some generic Nebula 10g SFP+, 10gtek 10g SFP+ DACs and all work well.
I believe at worst you get a message in the logs about the vendor not being supported for both DAC and optics. I did some googling and they look to work fine with 3rd party options.
I would look at getting a Cisco Nexus 5010 off eBay. They are a simple L2 switch that will give you 24 10G ports. There are many 3rd party SFP manufacturers that will work with this switch.
What OS do those Nexus switches generally run? I may need to think about getting one for my lab, sometimes they are pretty “cheap”. If they are IOS 15.x I’m good, anything else and I’d have to learn a bit more.
They run NX-OS, which is very similar to IOS. As long as you don’t plan to do any intervlan routing at the switch level (I don’t recommend this anyway) then you should be good. All you’ll need to do to use the switch is configure access or trunk ports and maybe port-channels for LACP.
Just make sure your design supports all systems that you want to have 10G connectivity between them are on the same vlan. I have one that I use as the backbone for my VMware cluster and NetApp storage. All storage and vMotion traffic are used on ports that connect to my Nexus switch.
I was curious and checked the current pricing on eBay. They are going for around $300 (buy it now) so you might be able to get it cheaper. If you do buy one and need help setting it up, let me know. We could always do a remote session.
I’ve seen them going cheaper and almost bought one 6 months ago. I really need to concentrate on my CCNA and finish it, hard to do when you are doing it on your own. But work won’t even buy the books, let alone the hardware to do labs. I should probably upgrade two more switches to 2960s series, but I think my routers are still in the current course.
Then I should probably branch up to voice, seems to be a bit of demand in my area for people that are good with voice/video.
Back to the switch, I’ve ordered “Cisco” branded SFP+ (ebay) that were pulls from upgrades that seem to work fine, they go for around $6 to $8 USD each and normally free shipping. I bought a handful the last time I bought them, but haven’t brought my XCP-NG lab home to hook up so not doing much now. ANX switch would probably stay at work where VM lab is currently located. Thankfully I do have vpn between work and home networks so I can do stuff on them from home.
Greg, I was able to get my CCNA just using Cisco Packet Tracer which is free. I did use physical hardware for my CCNP, but I think you could do it using EVE-ng today.
If you don’t mind an older loud switch that is fiber only, I have a Fujitsu XG2000R and 10 transceivers I’m not using and would like to get rid of. It has less than two years of powered on time.
VyOS says it only runs on x86 hardware, that means many (most) purpose built switches will not run it. Some SDN type switchers/routers might run it and you’d have to do a lot of research.
As far as that Cisco switch goes, it is probably fine, but old. It is POE first version so not a lot of power available. It will be somewhat loud. It does not say which version of the firmware it is running, could be as old as 12, but probably 15, resources to program it are more than available including official certification training materials.
If I were looking for 10gb ad didn’t care about noise, I would probably look at the Cisco Nexus 5000 or 7000 series. Or one of the Mikrotek products which are normally a bit more quiet.
Thanks for the offer. That is definitely intersting, and I am actually considering a CRS317-1G-16S+RM as one of my options. But I have no idea what that is. didn’t even know that Fujitsu makes switches. I checked its manual and it seems that it requires licensing. It didn’t say anything about its software thou, which is always a good sign What does it run? do you know what CPU it uses? Also, where are you located? cause shipping is gonna be a thing for that. I am in the Bay Area.
I was hoping to change the Cisco OS so I wouldn’t have to deal with their licensing, but sadly that doesn’t seem to be possible, and as such, Cisco is not a go for me. But, yeah Nexus series do look good (hardware wise).
I tried a Mikrotik and hated it. Ended up selling it for a $70 loss, but other people love them.
I haven’t run into any licensing issues with the Fujitsu. I’m not sure exactly what it runs, but it’s your enterprise cli type. It was top of the line in its day. The original MSRP was $18,000.
I’m in WI. I’m guessing shipping would be in the $75 ish, but I haven’t actually priced it.
What didn’t you like about the Mikrotik? I don’t really have that much experience with them, but recently I got an RB4011, and so far I love it. ( also the only true 1Gig router that I could find )
I got the crs326-24s+2q+rm. I couldn’t get valns to work right. If I tried connecting my ESXi hosts it would break console access to the switch and not actually route anything to the host. Not 100% sure if it was a switch problem or a me problem I wasn’t able to get help that actually solved the problem from the seller, Mikrotik, or the community. After 12+ hours banging my head against the wall I walked away. It just wasn’t worth it.
I was thinking $100 plus actual shipping for the Fujisu, and mine comes with 10 of the XFP modules.
What does it run? do you know what CPU it uses? Also, where are you located? cause shipping is gonna be a thing for that. I am in the Bay Area.