Switch for IPMI and other IPMI questions

[M.Holder]

Hi,

I wanted to know which switches are working with Supermicros IPMI.
Is any 10/100 unmanaged switch ok? Or should I consider a gigabit one?

I´ve read many are using a Cisco 2950 as IPMI switch, they are cheap (and lound as I recherched). Is there a good fan mod for it?
Or can I run it without a fan? As I wont use IPMI so often and dont use many ports with high load.

Original plan was to have a single network just for IPMI with no access from the outside or from the rest of the LAN.
But thinking more about it, should I consider a extra port on the pfSense box to obtain VPN access to the IPMI network?
Or leave it without internet connection and use the VPN in the normal LAN and just use RemoteDesktop to access the Host/VM Desktops.

Sorry if these are dump questions, but I just start digging into servers/networking/etc


Regards,
Max

 

[Patrick]

Max - you can easily use an inexpensive network switch for dedicated IPMI. I like having VPN access.

 

[Chuckleb]

We have bought the cheapest 10/100 switches that we can find. They work great ;-) totally nothing special about it.

 

[Patrick]

We have bought the cheapest 10/100 switches that we can find. They work great ;-) totally nothing special about it.

I only use gigabit since they cost a few dollars more and you get a bigger backhaul pipe if you are doing multi-node ISO mounts.

 

[M.Holder]

I bought for 3,50€ a Netgear FS108, 7 ports should be enough for a while
I will just do single node mounts, dont need it that often with large files.