16x and 24 port 10GB switch options for datacentre, or perhaps infiniband

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mephisto

Member
Nov 6, 2013
49
12
8
London
Hi guys,

I'm planning to refresh some servers I have at a datacentre and I'm planning to get everything on 10GB network. The idea is to use a couple of ZFS boxes replicating data to each other and between 4 to 6 hosts with VMware ESXi running the VMs over NFS on the ZFS boxes. My idea is to have 2x 10GBASE-T ports per host, connected to 2 different switches for fail over. Then I I plan to have 1 nic for VM traffic and the other for NFS, having fail over to each other, so in case one nic/switch fails, all VM traffic and NFS data can go down a single path for HA purposes.

I'm using a couple of 12 port Netgear switches XS712T 10-Gigabit Smart Managed Switch Series - XS712T | Smart Managed Switches | Switches | Business | NETGEAR and they have been working fine so far but I'm aware Netgear is not what will come to mind to most people (shame ubiquity doesn't have a big 10GBASE-T switch yet), I was wondering what could be a viable option without breaking the bank? Maybe a switch that can also deal better with iSCSI in case I decide to move away from NFS?

Another option is to go infiniband, so I could have way more than 10GB and still keep inside the budget, but I'm not aquainted with it for ethernet. I want to have VM traffic (ip traffic, network shares, etc) and NFS running down the infiniband network so if need, I can have all traffic going down one single NIC, and also possible to connect to a regular 10GBASE-T network if needed. If this possible?

What do you guys believe would work best, keeping in mind complexity and costs?

Thanks!
 

mephisto

Member
Nov 6, 2013
49
12
8
London
I'm still evaluating options. I was hoping more people could shed some light here on what would be best to use :(