noob question time. (I used to design ASICs for enterprise 10/40/100/400G switches and routers, but never had any exposure to the end-user/IT side of things)
1) The documentation materials talk about the SFP ports being for stacking/uplink. There's no reason I can't use them for my NAS/desktop, right?
2) Is it just the base-T transceiver which determines whether an SFP+ port's link will be able to negotiate at 2.5 or 5 gbps (ie, 802.3bz)? Or does the switch need to support it too? Will the 6450/7150/7250 all support this with the right transceiver?
I have one run which has cat5e, and will be nearly impossible to re-run with fiber or cat6 without opening lots of walls. I know "sometimes" 10G will work over cat5e at moderate distances, even though it isn't supported. I'd like this link to be 10G, but would settle for 2.5 or 5gbps. Anything specific I should look for beyond what's noted in the STH 10G transceiver guide for the ~$40 options? Any better (used?) transceiver options?
3) Do the 7250-24 and 7250-48 *both* idle at 50w, while the 6450-24 idles at 25w? If so, it might be worth me giving up the extra 10G SFP ports for my use case; otherwise I'll probably go 7250
4) Looks like a new QNAP QSW-M408S or QSW-M408-2C costs about the same as a 7250-24p on ebay, and has all the ports I "really" need for now. The 7250 has more ports for the future and PoE for possible future projects. Any reason NOT to get the 7250 over the QNAP?