Help me choose a switch or two!

[FingerBlaster]

The use will be for my home lab, so trying to balance budget, features, performance. I also want gear that's used in industry for the learning experience as well. So for example Ubiquiti is out.



Here are my requirements:

• L3 switch (mainly for vlan routing, i don't use bgp)
• POE (i have about 10 POE devices)
• 3 QSFP+ ports (uplinks to 2 esxi hosts, 1 diy san)
• 1 SFP+ ports (need at least 1 for FTTH handoff)
• 1 10baseT port (to my main workstation in my "office", can't run fiber without tearing down drywall, currently I use an SFP+ 10gbase-t transceiver)

I currently have a 48 port poe+ switch that i could sell for about $800 on ebay, so say I have a $1,000 budget. My current switch only has 4 SFP+ ports, and no QSFP+. It's a Dell, not super crazy about Dell switches in general, but don't hate them. It almost does everything I need except no QSFP+, and once i get FTTH in 2-3 months, i won't have enough SFP+ ports...

My thoughts/options.

1. I could get a cheap switch with 4 QSFP+ ports, use it as a core switch for my backbone infrastructure, then uplink via 10gbe to my current switch and leave the 10gbase-t sfp+ transceiver in either my switch or put it in the new cheap one.
2. The Juniper EX4300 48 port poe looks like an great option. 4 QSFP+ ports (does not support breakout cables), plus 4 SFP+ with an addon card. JunOS looks like it would be fun to learn. the 1 10gbase-t port i need would probably work with an SFP+ transceiver.
3. ??? Other options? I'm open.

 

[itronin]

ICX 6610-48P???

thread

 

[FingerBlaster]

ICX 6610-48P???

thread

Not a huge Brocade fan, but also not a bad price, and seems to tick my boxes.

 

[itronin]

I can say after 2 weeks I'm really pleased with the purchase. Deals can still be had. I got my 2 -48P's for 225.00 each shipped in January. Only missing rackmount ears and am looking for those but in the meantime I have them on a sturdy 2 post shelf.

I replaced a Cisco SG500x-48, Cisco SG300-10mpp, and a Quanta LB6m (FI firmware) with just 1 ICX 6610. I purchased two to play with cross switch link agg and because I figured I'd need that many SFP+ ports. I was using 12 ports on the Quanta, but I moved a pair of systems to the handy dandy HP 40Gbe IB cards reflashed to 40Gbe Ethernet and I can run everything on 1 switch now (if I choose).

edit - 40gbe connections are without link agg and stacking turned off. I can't even drive 40gbe of ethernet bandwidth with the storage I have (I run out of PCIE bandwidth first).

NetAPP QSFP .5M cables work great for stacking and are cheap. NetAPP QSFP 3M cables work great and are cheap to reach the servers.
I was able to pick up the Avago fiber 5M QSFP to SFP+ breakout cable (cheap) to get me into the next room for two systems that previously did not have 10G...

The thread is long which could make it a bit intimidating or simply TLDR... However it is very much worth the read through.

Really really, happy with this purchase and switch (in infrastructure).

 

[Aestr]

ICX 6610-48P???

Not a huge Brocade fan, but also not a bad price, and seems to tick my boxes.

Pretty sure it only does 2 QSFP+ 40gb ports as the other two are meant for breakout into 4x10gb each. I don't have one and could be wrong, but that's what I gathered from the thread. I guess you could get two of them as it appears you can stack them with the 4x10gb QSFP+ ports.

 

[FingerBlaster]

The thread is long which could make it a bit intimidating or simply TLDR... However it is very much worth the read through.

71 pages, you're not kidding.

One thing i found on page 1 that could be a deal breaker. 2 of the qsfp+ ports operate as 40gb, but the other 2 are for breakout only???

 

[itronin]

Pretty sure it only does 2 QSFP+ 40gb ports as the other two are meant for breakout into 4x10gb each. I don't have one and could be wrong, but that's what I gathered from the thread. I guess you could get two of them as it appears you can stack them with the 4x10gb QSFP+ ports.

I believe you are correct and I have not tried that though it could be an interesting test when I get back home.

 

[itronin]

71 pages, you're not kidding.

One thing i found on page 1 that could be a deal breaker. 2 of the qsfp+ ports operate as 40gb, but the other 2 are for breakout only???

good question to ask in the other thread but the way I read it in the thread is you can stack using the breakout ports if you choose. When I'm back I'm going to test with my QSFP-QSFP cable and see . Be curious if it makes 4x10gbe links for the stack or treats that as a single 40gbe or chooses a single 10Gb connection for the stack. If it works though then two switches and a single break out port used as a stack on each switch would give you 4 40GBe only, your two stack ports (single cable) and then two breakout ports for 8 more sfp+. dunno maybe a hard thing to find a single switch at a reasonable price to get you what you want. What's also clear in the thread (I believe - ha!) is you can't link agg front sfp+ ports with the rear breakout sfp+ ports.

 

[FingerBlaster]

Not ideal, but for the right price i could get 2 24 port switches, one poe, one not and stack them and still have 4 qsfp ports and then way more sfp+ ports than i'll ever need.

 

[FingerBlaster]

I just ended up ordering the Juniper. i need 4 40bge ports, and i'd rather run 1 switch than 2.