I've been planning my entry into the home lab world with some serious help from this site and I have some networking questions regarding fiber in the home (some questions for home office network and some for home lab). My current "server room" (will also be home lab) shares a wall with my home office. Last time I renovated the house I ran cat5e everywhere for GbE. With ever increasing file sizes I want MOAR SPEED, but I'm a fiber n00b and 10GbE over cat6, etc, doesn't sound very exciting.
The most important and most immediate thing I want is a fast connection between my storage server and my workstation. Straight line distance is about 3m; probably double that for a cable run through the wall.
-Is a ConnectX2 a reasonable NIC for this? I'm cost conscious and the SFP+ 10Gb options seem the most affordbale on eBay
-Can I use "good fiber" in the wall so I don't have to replace that cable to upgrade to 40Gb or 100Gb in the future? What would that "good fiber" be called? All I've found so far is recommendations to buy "OM3" for home lab use but I don't know what the other options or reasons for them are.
-How do I actually do the connections at the wall plates? Adding keystone jacks to the ends of cat5e was easy to figure out, but I feel like fiber is not so simple to deal with?
-Aliexpress has some fiber optic wall plates for only a couple dollars - is there a reason not to cheap out on these? If so, do you have a recommendation on where to get better wall plates? (I'm in Canada)
-Should I leave the GbE connection from the storage server to the switch that services the home and create another subnet for the point to point fiber connection between server and workstation? Or is there a better way to do what I want to do?
Now for the lab! I want to mess around with fiber in the lab because curiosity.
-Fiber switches are friggin expensive, it seems. I also don't know much (anything) about them. Do you have a recommendation for a switch to learn with?
-Is it possible to have a switch that I can use with both SFP+ 10Gb NICs and QSFP 40Gb NICs?
-Reading about infiniband made me curious. How does it interact with the other stuff I've been talking about? Can you use a fiber ethernet network and infiniband together or is that a stupid question?
Sorry that turned into such a read. Thanks in advance!
The most important and most immediate thing I want is a fast connection between my storage server and my workstation. Straight line distance is about 3m; probably double that for a cable run through the wall.
-Is a ConnectX2 a reasonable NIC for this? I'm cost conscious and the SFP+ 10Gb options seem the most affordbale on eBay
-Can I use "good fiber" in the wall so I don't have to replace that cable to upgrade to 40Gb or 100Gb in the future? What would that "good fiber" be called? All I've found so far is recommendations to buy "OM3" for home lab use but I don't know what the other options or reasons for them are.
-How do I actually do the connections at the wall plates? Adding keystone jacks to the ends of cat5e was easy to figure out, but I feel like fiber is not so simple to deal with?
-Aliexpress has some fiber optic wall plates for only a couple dollars - is there a reason not to cheap out on these? If so, do you have a recommendation on where to get better wall plates? (I'm in Canada)
-Should I leave the GbE connection from the storage server to the switch that services the home and create another subnet for the point to point fiber connection between server and workstation? Or is there a better way to do what I want to do?
Now for the lab! I want to mess around with fiber in the lab because curiosity.
-Fiber switches are friggin expensive, it seems. I also don't know much (anything) about them. Do you have a recommendation for a switch to learn with?
-Is it possible to have a switch that I can use with both SFP+ 10Gb NICs and QSFP 40Gb NICs?
-Reading about infiniband made me curious. How does it interact with the other stuff I've been talking about? Can you use a fiber ethernet network and infiniband together or is that a stupid question?
Sorry that turned into such a read. Thanks in advance!