Mellanox SX6036, Rail Kit

[DRW]

I'm not sure if these are particular amazing deals, but they seemed pretty decent to me.

SX6036 (real Mellanox, not EMC), $120

Mellanox SX6036 36 Port QSFP Managed InfiniBand Switch 2xPsu - Same Day Shipping | eBay

How do we refurbish items at our facility?.

www.ebay.com

I offered 117 and they accepted (I know, I really lowballed them there).
It comes with a 1 yr Allstate warranty, for whatever that's worth (probably not much).
Arrived pretty well packaged, but the rack ears were bent up (I straightened them again with a pair of channel-locks and very little effort).
Had some extremely sticky tape residue on it in a couple places, but it cleaned off just fine with solvent.
Overall very clean inside and not dented or anything.
I haven't gotten around to booting it up because my serial console usb cable decided to die on me and I'm waiting for a replacement.

MSX60-SKIT (Mellanox rail kit), $40 (or less if you are ordering more)

*NEW* Mellanox MSX60-SKIT, rev: A1, 1U Rails for SX60xx (Contact for Bulk Buy) | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for *NEW* Mellanox MSX60-SKIT, rev: A1, 1U Rails for SX60xx (Contact for Bulk Buy) at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

It looks like this guy has a ton of these and wants to get rid of them.
I ordered one set. I can't imagine that I'd need more as I'd probably go to 100G before I max out the 6036.

 

[ribroc]

It's still tough to say no to the 6036, right? Even with low-watt 100G like that tiny mikrotik on the market I struggle a bit on the value proposition for something that's really nice but also really quiet. Spending 3x as much for 100G vs 40G, and 1/2 the power draw is very tempting if you don't need all the ports especially when breakout cables are an option.

I still think the 6036 is the best option for most people, 40G/56G is still hard enough to saturate in a home setting, and the 30-40W consumption with a quiet fan mod means you're out the door for about $200 and a weekend.

 

[DRW]

Yeah that's pretty much it. I really don't need 100G for anything atm. By the time I do, it will be even cheaper (and maybe we will be talking about 200G being tempting). Either way, I will probably still want a lot of 10G. I don't really envision this leaving my rack anytime in the next 5 years.

 

[GhettoSuperstar]

My question for everyone, do I need this? I have a desktop and a workstation.

Both are powerful but the workstation is really overkill. I want to use the workstation for AI training and such. I tried to use a Bluefield ConnectX-5 100G cards but the desktop used the card without issue. The workstation didn't (don't know why but it's a server board, go figure). Nothing I could do, could get the Bluefield ConnectX-5 cards recognized by the motherboard (Gigabyte MZ32-AR0 rev.1).

So i sold the Bluefield cards and bought ConnectX-4 cards PCIe 16x. Both computers recognize the cards without issue, took the firmware without issue. But for the life of me, I can't get OpenSM working so that I can have computer to computer direct infiniband connection. I could buy this and rely on 40/56g infiniband speeds without relying on OpenSM. Or I could just settle for 100g Ethernet direct communications. I already have all the 100g ethenet fiber tranceivers and it just works. Sorry for the epic story.