Switch suggestion and SFP to go with

Hello everyone,

I know I may sound a little bit dumb, but it is my first build with sfp+ ports.

I am volunteering for a non profit to upgrade their network.

I suggested them to go with Netgate 6100 MAX pfSense+ Security Gateway and two of USW-Pro-24-POE (400W).

My only question to you all is, Can I use this 10G Direct Attach Cable
UACC-DAC-SFP10-0.5M to connect both switches and One switch to the the pfsense using 10gig SFP+ port or will I need any other module with them ?

Thanks.

I’ve been using the 10Gtek from Amazon (or other places), they are a little cheaper, but either should work.

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Like a lot of questions on here I think the answer is “it depends”.

If you are wanting redundancy to the firewall I wouldn’t suggest UniFi. The reason is because if you only have a single uplink to your firewall and the switch carrying the uplink goes down then the entire network is down.

What you want IMO are switches that can do MC-LAG (Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Group). That way if one switch fails you aren’t completely down or down at all depending on how the rest of your redundancy is in your infrastructure.

But if you don’t care about that level of redundancy then what you have is a fine choice. You might get away with setting up your LAN interfaces in load balancing mode instead of LACP. LACP is the proper way to do this though.

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I do want to setup a fail over system.

What I am planning to do is load balance switch 1 with one 10gig sfp and 1gig lan port.

Switch 2 should be fine. There are no mission critical devices on that switch.

So moving towards switch 1. Is it fine if I do so ?
Most things will work using 10gig sfp that I shared ago and just for a fail over it will use 1gig lan port.

I don’t see the need to complicat things with bonded ports as that is a very rare failure mode. Also the UniFi Enterprise Campus Aggregation is the only model the support MC-Lagg. One SFP+ using a 10GTEK or a cable from somewhere like FS.com is fine.

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Can I buy this one from ubnt : UACC-DAC-SFP10-0.5M ?

Yes, that one should work fine.

I have that cable and used it to connect a cheap switch to a 6100 MAX and it worked without issues.