[EU] Looking for cheap SFP+ switches and QSFP+ backbone switch

[MarcoP82]

I have a few ConnectX-3 cards with dual QSFP+ ports on each and I'd like to have their capacity available for a local LAN party (36 total 1G ports required) without breaking the bank. The problem is the QSFP+ enabled switches common in the US are either much more expensive in the EU or just plainly never sold here.

The bottom line is that we want around 36 1G ports and ideally 3x or 4x 12-ports would do, we already make do with 2x 24-port switches. The uplinks would suffice with 10G speeds to not bottleneck easily, but I'd still need to get the SQFP+'s 40G link split among the 10G links. There are switches that allow 4 SFP+ ports to be used with a QSFP+ breakout cable, so ideally an additional switch with 1 or 2 QSFP+ ports and 8 or more SFP+ ports would work, as well as a switch with 12 or more SFP+ ports that support a QSFP+ to 4x SFP+ breakout cable.

I'd like to keep the costs as low as possible, ideally I'd be between 300 and 500€ for all the switches and cabling. The brand doesn't matter, 2nd hand gear is a given and if possible a low noise solution (or moddable to be) is preferred.

Any recommendations in this quest would be greatly appreciated.

 

[fohdeesha]

https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...s-cheap-powerful-10gbe-40gbe-switching.21107/

also I REALLY doubt you'll actually need 40gbE on your servers (or whatever the ConnectX cards are in). I run an annual 200+ person lan party ( reBOOT LAN ) and our backend servers (that do http caching, steam caching, file sharing etc all on one virtualization cluster) see a peak of 5 to 6gbit/s

also it's not clear if you mean you want to use a QSFP > 4X SFP+ breakout cable with the ConnectX cards, but they do not support QSFP breakout. they'll only link at 40gbps (or a single channel of 10gbps).

 

[MarcoP82]

Thanks for your reply but alas Brocade ICX isn't cheap in the EU, they probably haven't sol much of them over here.
The cheapest ICX6450 is around 240€ for a single one listed, the next one is 300€ and it doesn't have any QSFP+ ports.
The cheapest ICX6610 is around 700€ for a single one listed.

HP and Cisco are more common here in the EU but I'm having a tough time finding anything that isn't 48x SFP+ with a QSFP+ port.

Ideally I want to have a single core switch with one or two QSFP+ ports and multiple SFP+ ports to connect to the edge switches, which ideally have 2x SFP+ if 16 1GbE copper ports or more.
That way I can attach one or two servers via QSFP+ at 40G link speed and not have a bottleneck even if everyone would saturate their 1G link. Files will be hosted on PCIe NVMe storage, with the desire to not make the network the bottleneck.

 

[Blinky 42]

If you really want 40Gb + 1Gb you can look for some Juniper ex4300's if the Brocades are not reasonable in your area.

Unless you are running a file server to host the actual game s/w then you probably won't really need more than 10Gb from the servers to switches. Even if individual clients hit 1Gb for a little while somehow do you need line rate from all clients back to your server 24x7, and can the server sustain 40Gb+ of traffic to/from the clients at all times? Just don't want you fighting to try and build something that is overkill for actual needs. Save the $ for fun @ the event

 

[fohdeesha]

people VASTLY overestimate how much traffic they're going to see - you'll never have 100% of your attendees maxing out their connections at once. I just looked at our event graphs from 2018 with 150 attendees, adding up every link together at once, there still wasn't more than 10gbps of traffic at once, and that's with a lot of attendees even having their own 10gb ports: https://i.imgur.com/4TKN2KF.png

not trying to poopoo your idea, just trying to save you some money and hassle - you're not even talking 50 people

 

[MarcoP82]

If you really want 40Gb + 1Gb you can look for some Juniper ex4300's if the Brocades are not reasonable in your area.

The Juniper EX4300 are also quite expensive in the EU, the cheapest is aroung 700€

Unless you are running a file server to host the actual game s/w then you probably won't really need more than 10Gb from the servers to switches.

people VASTLY overestimate how much traffic they're going to see - you'll never have 100% of your attendees maxing out their connections at once.

I see what you guys mean, I'll forget about the 40Gbit connection. Although our LAN has had quite some bandwidth throughput usage during peak hours, our multiple 1G links have been a bottleneck a few times. What I can always do is use a QSFP+ to SFP+ adapter so my QSFP+ cards become more popular 10Gbit links.

Suggestions are welcome, I'm thinking about the following layouts:
Config one:
- 3 or 4x small edge switches (8-16 1G ports) with 1 SFP+ port
- 1x core switch with 6+ SFP+ 10G ports

Config two:
- 2 small edge switches (12+ 1G ports) with 1 SFP+ port
- 1 edge switch with 12+ 1G ports and 4 SFP+ ports (1 or 2 links to servers, 1 link to each switch)

For the first config, I can find new gear from Mikrotik that's relatively cheap: ~140€ for the edge switches (MikroTik 326-24G-2S+RM) and ~250€ for the core switch (Mikrotik CRS309-1G-8S+IN). But I'd rather have something cheaper and used if anyone has any suggestions.

 

[MarcoP82]

I found some switches that will also suffice: Dell PowerConnect 5524 (link) as next to the two SFP+ 10Gb ports, it also has a 40Gb stacking feature through HDMI. These were around 110€ each and with 3 I expect to be able to keep bottlenecks to a minimum.