Been lurking a while, wanted to thank @fohdeesha for this thread (and docs page) as it introduced me to Brocade hardware and let me dump my Unifi stuff entirely. I picked up two ICX-7150 12's and a 7150-24P for my setup.
I wanted to share some of my findings:
7150-24p Fan Mod:
It appears to be very happy with the fans replaced with Noctua NF-A4x20 PWM (while I could run it in fanless mode, I leave the fans on and still keep my POE draw below the fanless threshold). These are 4 wire fans that have board connectors that just work. I doubt they'll work in the 7250's, but if you end up with a 7150-24p that you want to keep quiet but want more airflow than fanless, these seem to be a good solution (they don't stall at low voltage either).
Multi Subnet/Domain DHCP (since that appears to be the next step after "i got vlan routing and a transit network working"):
For anyone doing multiple vlans/subnets who want dhcp dns working with different domains (ie, subnet A with *.mgmt.foo.lan, subnet B with *.bfs.foo.lan) but don't want to go so far as to roll your own, you can resort to using Pi-Hole. It is dnsmasq with some special settings and helpers, and most importantly, it still supports additional conf-dir directives. This lets you drop in additional settings ontop of the existing pi-hole tunings, as files in a configuration directory. When you do this it is best to also use the command sudo pihole-FTL dnsmasq-test to ensure you don't have conflicting entries / didn't mess up formatting - it attempts to load all your configuration fragments and will report errors if it finds any - saves you the risk of reloading the service and it crashing at start.
In my setup that looks like:
- PiHole (at 10.10.10.7) installed and running on the mgmt.foo.lan / 10.10.10.0/24 / vlan 10, with DHCP enabled (nothing fancy here), ICX providing routing at 10.10.10.1
- ICX doing DHCP relay for bfs.foo.lan / 10.10.20.0/24 / vlan 20, sending to 10.10.10.7:
- I've added this file to my Pi-Hole: /etc/dnsmasq.d/09-git-configs.conf
This lets me have a per subnet / per file configuration:
So this is a heavily commented file I use (for my future self) dnsmasq-options/conf/01-bfs-dhcp.conf
One recent TIL: you can add static dhcp entries outside of your DHCP reservation pool. Something I never thought much about in the last 20 years since most interfaces to create a static entry grab the devices existing reservation to work with (which is from the pool). I've used that to throw all my dumb IOT things into the 200-249 range (force of habit has anything with a manually assigned IP < .100).
I wanted to share some of my findings:
7150-24p Fan Mod:
It appears to be very happy with the fans replaced with Noctua NF-A4x20 PWM (while I could run it in fanless mode, I leave the fans on and still keep my POE draw below the fanless threshold). These are 4 wire fans that have board connectors that just work. I doubt they'll work in the 7250's, but if you end up with a 7150-24p that you want to keep quiet but want more airflow than fanless, these seem to be a good solution (they don't stall at low voltage either).
Multi Subnet/Domain DHCP (since that appears to be the next step after "i got vlan routing and a transit network working"):
For anyone doing multiple vlans/subnets who want dhcp dns working with different domains (ie, subnet A with *.mgmt.foo.lan, subnet B with *.bfs.foo.lan) but don't want to go so far as to roll your own, you can resort to using Pi-Hole. It is dnsmasq with some special settings and helpers, and most importantly, it still supports additional conf-dir directives. This lets you drop in additional settings ontop of the existing pi-hole tunings, as files in a configuration directory. When you do this it is best to also use the command sudo pihole-FTL dnsmasq-test to ensure you don't have conflicting entries / didn't mess up formatting - it attempts to load all your configuration fragments and will report errors if it finds any - saves you the risk of reloading the service and it crashing at start.
In my setup that looks like:
- PiHole (at 10.10.10.7) installed and running on the mgmt.foo.lan / 10.10.10.0/24 / vlan 10, with DHCP enabled (nothing fancy here), ICX providing routing at 10.10.10.1
- ICX doing DHCP relay for bfs.foo.lan / 10.10.20.0/24 / vlan 20, sending to 10.10.10.7:
Code:
interface ve 20
ip address 10.10.20.1 255.255.255.0
ip helper-address 1 10.10.10.7
Code:
# this is a folder checked out of git for version control
# the .../conf,*.conf means it will only load files that end in .conf
# yes this is technically a security issue that i have my dns/dhcp
# configuration pointed to load files from a folder owned by a
# generic user
# this also means if pi-hole *does* blow away /etc/dnsmasq.q/*
# restoring configurations after an update is just adding this file
conf-dir=/home/pi/dnsmasq-options/conf,*.confSo this is a heavily commented file I use (for my future self) dnsmasq-options/conf/01-bfs-dhcp.conf
Code:
# I want my local static dns entries to be in git also
addn-hosts=/home/pi/dnsmasq-options/hosts/
# I want to configure DHCP settings for a specific subnet / range
# I can set a tag once (set:bfs) and then add settings to it by using
# it in the next line with tag:bfs, this works for all dhcp-* settings
# https://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/docs/dnsmasq-man.html
dhcp-range=set:bfs,10.10.20.100,10.10.20.199,255.255.255.0,12h
dhcp-option=tag:bfs,option:router,10.10.20.1
# this tells dnsmasq that it will be getting DHCP relay's from 10.10.10.1
# for the 10.10.20.0/24 subnet
shared-network=10.10.10.1,10.10.20.0
# this is the important bit for dual subnet, pi-hole will just set mgm.foo.lan
# but because this is more specific (with 10.10.20.0/24) it will be allowed
# letting us assign dns names via dhcp hosts for the 10.10.20.0 subnet
domain=bfs.foo.lan,10.10.20.0/24
